[okfn-discuss] Governance and structure of the Open Knowledge Foundation and its activities

[Claudia Mueller-Birn]

Hi,

On Nov 19, 2009, at 6:11 PM, Jonathan Gray wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Ed Pastore <epastore at metagovernment.org> wrote:
>> Those are certainly reasonable objections, and many of the tools being
>> developed are designed precisely to work around such downfalls.
>> Additionally, there's no set requirement that governance be ceded to the
>> software (though that is the eventual goal): groups can use it as one form
>> of input into decision-making and gradually increase the power of that input
>> as they feel comfortable with it.
> 
> I should also point out that One Click Orgs (which is supported by the
> Open Knowledge Foundation) is an open source/open knowledge project
> which aims to facilitate group decision making. They are experimenting
> with things like proxy votes - to allow people to pass on votes to
> other people:
> 
>  http://www.oneclickor.gs/
> 
> They are currently beta testing with small groups of test users. I
> definitely think that things like this could be useful for the OKF and
> its various projects and working groups further down the line.

Very interesting discussion but I'd like to start a little bit earlier, just by the initial proposal. I have some questions. Maybe you all have an shared understanding of this already. However, I need some clarifications:

Introduction
Wouldn't it be useful to add some general objectives here? I mean, why is there a need for the open knowledge foundation? Perhaps we should add a set of goals. Each project/working group should somehow working on reaching these goals. 

Structure
Are organization not allowed to be members of the foundation. Just imagine, a small free software project, organized by a non-profit organization, would like to join OKF. That is not possible?

Projects/Working Groups
Maybe this is common sense knowledge, but IMO there should be some explanations about, how the work of these organizational units differs. I mean, a working group is part of a project therefore more a sub-project, isn't it? Therefore, I suggest to add the words long-term and short-term in the description. 

Communication
I am dealing in my research amongst other things with free/open source software ecologies. In my recent research I have a very interesting case because for an outsider the whole community is not understandable because it is very diverse (e.g. in terms of mailing lists). Therefore, I think it is very very important for the future work of the OKF to organize all communications, collaborations, and interactions around as few as possible sw tools. For example, mailing lists should be only provided by one provider, documents/information available on only one website or closely related sites. I think it is one major responsibility to promote the OK idea and to gain more visibility and members. Therefore, the whole governance structure should be as less complex as possible that any newbie can join the OKF easily. 

Hmm, .. that is all for now...

Claudia


> 
> -- 
> Jonathan Gray
> 
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://www.okfn.org
> 
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