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

[Mike Linksvayer]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Luis Villa<luis.villa at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

That's a good question, but so long as geography still matters, merely
being based in/somewhat focused on the UK can be a big part of the
answer relative to actually doing entirely distinct activities, unless
the OKF really doesn't want it to be part of the answer.

> 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.

I know nothing about OSI internals, but it seems odd that they'd be
floundering, if that's accurate. First, there's nothing wrong with
just being steward of the license approval process. May be fairly
routine, but very important.

Second (if there needs to be more), open source has only won in a
limited fashion (as you note) and there's an obvious list of advocacy,
outreach and policy activities in furtherance of world domination to
pursue [funding for], eg education about how open source works, public
sector and other funder policy mandating open source, challenge
threats to open source (software patents), net services, research on
impact of licensing choices, research on how long term trends in
intellectual protectionism or anything else impacts open source,
explaining what open source is and isn't ... other organizations are
attacking all of these, but OSI has a natural advantage, especially on
the last. Of course deciding what to do given all of these
opportunities can be difficult. :-)

> 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'?

I'd guess that answering your first question re motivation and
philosophy and setting some very high goals (tending toward open as
ubiquitous, not merely routine) based on this would put off this good
problem to have and premature floundering for a long time.

Mike