Forgive me for asking what may be obvious, but is the Open Knowledge Foundation actually a "foundation", i.e. with funding, like the Wikimedia Foundation or the Mozilla Foundation?
If so, then that's a major distinguishing characteristic in the open data space. If not, then I'd wonder whether its name might lend confusion about its mission... Cheers, Andy Luis Villa wrote: > On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Rufus Pollock<[email protected]> wrote: >> 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? >> >> * What do you think it should be doing? >> >> * What impact should it be having? >> >> Look forward to hearing what people think ... > > OKF has, as I see it, three issues: > > 1) what is OKF's motivation and philosophy? In other words, why are we > promoting open? Is it just a fuzzy sense that open is good, or can we > get more specific? The 'about' page defines open, but doesn't say why > open is a good thing. I think having some clear sense of that would > help clarify a lot around what it is, where it is going, etc. (This > may be written down somewhere, and if so, I apologize, but it seems > worth putting front and center either way.) > > 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. > > 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. 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'? > > Hope this helps spark some discussion- > Luis > > _______________________________________________ > okfn-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss > -- Andy Kaplan-Myrth, M.A., LL.B. ------------------------------------------------ email: [email protected] web: http://kaplan-myrth.ca blog: http://blog.kaplan-myrth.ca ------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
