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

Wed Jul 15 09:37:49 UTC 2009

Dear list,

> 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?

As a newcomer to the OKFN (following Rufus's talk at OpenTech), I can give
you my opinion, for what it's worth, after browsing through the various
websites.

The main site doesn't seem to mention 'why' open is so good in all cases (and
do you really mean all cases?), and also why the OKFN needed to be setup.
Perhaps a History page would be useful?. Some examples of how different
open data sets have been re-used in projects might also be helpful
(e.g. postcodes+openstreetmap+houseprices=mystreetprices or similiar)

Also, is the OKFNs role only to promote open data or does it want to become an
archive as well?. For example, with the storage grid, will the OKFN be
maintaining the data in the grid, migrating formats as they become
obsolete, etc. 

There is a lot of information on the various websites/blogs so apologies if
I've missed some obvious answers to the above. 

regards,

Richard

-- 
Richard Palmer			| Centre for E-Research &
Systems Manager			| Centre for Computing in the Humanities
richard.d.palmer at kcl.ac.uk	| King's College London
Tel: 0207 848 1973 