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

[Jonathan Gray]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Luis Villa<luis.villa at gmail.com> wrote:
> If Apache is the model maybe we should spend some time thinking about
> what OKFN brings to the table for new projects- why would I want to
> make my project part of OKFN?

This is a really very useful question! :-)

[snip]
> What are OKFN's equivalents? How should OKFN strengthen/modify/etc.
> those equivalents over the next five years?

Further down the line I would hope that we could offer:

 * Hosting/storage (via KnowledgeForge + eventually Open Data Grid +
mailing lists)
 * Tools (blogs, wikis, versioned storage, trac, ... again via KnowledgeForge)
 * Legal/licensing support (Open Definition, Open Data Commons, ...)
 * Expertise (mainly via community, mailing lists, working groups,
events, etc.)
 * Publicity (blog, events, etc.)
 * Legal structure? (E.g. via One Click Orgs, which we support -
http://www.oneclickor.gs/)
 * Seed funding (either direct project funding or via competitions,
etc. - maybe one day!)

I guess this could be conceived of as OKF's function as 'incubator' or
'nurturer' (growing/supporting projects).

Another major function that I think is important is 'clearing house'
to try to strengthen communication/ties between various different
communities that support open knowledge in its various forms (open
government/PSI, civic hacker, free culture, CC, F/OSS, open access,
open data, open science, public domain, OER, digital scholarship, data
visualisation, data management, digital resources, ...). Hence events,
working groups and so on.

--
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org