[okfn-discuss] Summer of Content

[Rufus Pollock]

Jonathan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The Northern Summer of Content launches tomorrow. I've posted a brief 
> summary of their programme here:
> 
>   http://blog.okfn.org/2007/08/16/summer-of-content-launch/
> 
> They've added an entry for us (which I've started to edit) at:
> 
>   
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Summer_of_Content_organizations#Open_Knowledge_Foundation
> 
> It would be great to add ideas for projects which we would like to see, 
> or to help out with.

Absolutely, a couple of ideas:

1. Add Open Shakespeare items, specifically:

   * Need to produce an introduction -- currently thinking of working 
working off the Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition
   * Need a chronology of Shakespeare's works
   * Would be nice to annotate a particular (or find an existing text)
   * Other more technical tasks (e.g. producing a nice 'pdf' version of 
the Shakespeare texts)

2. Economics textbook:

   * This is something I already have some sections and code for.
   * Would be good to survey what was already there.
   * Has nice links to IP ...

[snip]
>  >The basic idea is to make it super-easy for people to open up their 
> content (pretty easy already, I think, thanks to your foundation's work
>  >and Creative Commons outreach initiatives) but also to request that 
> others open their work as well (creating template letters and a
>  >suggested schedule of sending them, etc).
>  >
>  >Can you help us out? Maybe this could become an entire class of Summer 
> of Content projects - a series of metaprojects trying to get
>  >existing content released under an open license... two birds with one 
> stone.
>  >
>  >Thoughts? Would OKFN be interested?
> 
> It seems to me that linking to opendefinition.org would be a good idea. 
> Do any of you think it could be worth producing/incorporating even more 
> basic material on how to openly license material, as they suggest? I 
> like the idea of building on our resources page [1] to create a 
> mini-project in which volunteers could write to content producers to see 
> if they'd considered using an open license. I'm currently starting to do 
> something similar for Open Textbook.
> 
> Any thoughts?

We should definitely do this! http://opendefinition.org/ already has the 
definition plus some template letters and we could easily flesh this out 
with more info such as:

   * An overview of copyright and a (very) short guide to copyright 
licensing
   * Links to Guide to Open Data Licensing
   * Links to other resources

Your idea of expanding this and linking this to a general effort to ask 
people to license their material is brilliant. Full speed ahead :)

~rufus