[okfn-discuss] Our vision: Why, How and What for the Open Knowledge Foundation

Tue Jul 14 13:50:41 UTC 2009

Forgive me for asking what may be obvious, but is the Open Knowledge 
Foundation actually a "foundation", i.e. with funding, like the 
Wikimedia Foundation or the Mozilla Foundation?

If so, then that's a major distinguishing characteristic in the open 
data space. If not, then I'd wonder whether its name might lend 
confusion about its mission...

Cheers,
Andy

Luis Villa wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Rufus Pollock<rufus.pollock at okfn.org>  wrote:
>> Five years on from the Foundation's start, now is a good time to have
>> a discussion of what the next 5 years (and beyond) of the Open
>> Knowledge Foundation should be.
>>
>> I've started some notes here:<http://wiki.okfn.org/Vision>  and to get
>> the ball rolling here are some specific questions I'd love to hear
>> people's views on:
>>
>>   * What do you think the Open Knowledge Foundation is?
>>
>>   * What do you think it should be doing?
>>
>>   * What impact should it be having?
>>
>> Look forward to hearing what people think ...
>
> OKF has, as I see it, three issues:
>
> 1) what is OKF's motivation and philosophy? In other words, why are we
> promoting open? Is it just a fuzzy sense that open is good, or can we
> get more specific? The 'about' page defines open, but doesn't say why
> open is a good thing. I think having some clear sense of that would
> help clarify a lot around what it is, where it is going, etc. (This
> may be written down somewhere, and if so, I apologize, but it seems
> worth putting front and center either way.)
>
> 2) there are a variety of organizations similar to OKF out there now-
> CC is the highest profile, but we can all probably list a few others
> that have more or less overlap with what CC does, like resource.org,
> openlibrary.org, etc. How is OKF distinguishing itself? Is it merely
> better at executing on what it does, or is there some organizational
> or philosophical differences that make us stand out? If so, focusing
> on those differences may make good strategic sense.
>
> 3) How is OKF preparing for the day when open 'wins'? The Open Source
> Initiative, ten years in, is now horribly floundering because, in some
> sense, they've won- open source is not dominant, but it is broadly
> accepted as part of the tool kit of software developers. Much of what
> used to be important/controversial for them (license approval,
> primarily) is now routine and uninteresting, and they have no other
> sense of what they should be doing. It would be good if OKF starting
> thinking now about 'what happens when open knowledge is routine',
> because I think we're already edging in that direction- we're seeing
> it in the slow proliferation of licenses, slow proliferation of groups
> in the space, etc. Does OKF then just fade away? Become a data
> repository? Become a source of licenses? a source of license
> proliferation? a government lobbying group, pushing for more open data
> 'at the margins'?
>
> Hope this helps spark some discussion-
> Luis
>
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>

-- 
Andy Kaplan-Myrth, M.A., LL.B.
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