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

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Mike Linksvayer<ml at creativecommons.org> wrote:
> 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.

I guess I'd put that under 'organizational differences'; if that is
the answer to my question, it suggests that the best answers to
Rufus's questions might be a focus on things that can be done 'best'
from the UK- e.g., focusing intently on UK-specific data or lobbying
UK .govs. (And perhaps stepping away from activities that aren't
UK-specific?)

>> 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.

It used to be a big deal, and not routine. Now the rest of the world
takes it for granted, even if it is still important, and so there is a
sense of organizational vacuum because it is no longer a big deal. :)

> 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. :-)

OSI has a natural advantage in all of these areas, and yet is failing
to capitalize at all on any of those. I raise the issue now for OKFN
because I think OSI is floundering in all of those areas in part
because it didn't start thinking about those issues early on; it
waited too long and people started doing those things in other
organizations.

[But really, I don't want this discussion to get bogged down in a
discussion of OSI; that's a discussion for a bar in SF or a pub in
Cambridge.]

Luis