Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by

Rufus Pollock Rufus Pollock (born 1980) is a British economist, activist and social entrepreneur. He has been a leading figure in the global open knowledge and open data movements, starting with his founding in 2004 of the non-profit Open Knowledge Foundation w ...

on 20 May 2004 in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, UK. It is incorporated in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

as a

private company limited by guarantee In British, Australian, Bermudian, Hong Kong and Irish company law (and previously New Zealand), a company limited by guarantee (CLG) is a type of corporation used primarily (but not exclusively) for non-profit organisations that require legal pe ...

. Between May 2016 and May 2019 the organisation was named ''Open Knowledge International'', but decided in May 2019 to return to ''Open Knowledge Foundation''.

Aims

The aims of Open Knowledge Foundation are: *Promoting the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why it is a good idea. *Running open knowledge events, such as OKCon. *Working on open knowledge projects, such as Open Economics or Open Shakespeare. *Providing infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. For example, the KnowledgeForge service and CKAN. *Acting at UK, European and international levels on open knowledge issues.

People

Renata Ávila Pinto joined as the new Chief Executive Officer of the Open Knowledge Foundation in October 2021. From February 2019 to August 2020,

Catherine Stihler Catherine Dalling Taylor Stihler (née Taylor; born 30 July 1973) is a Scottish former politician who is chief executive officer (CEO) of Creative Commons. A member of the Scottish Labour Party, she was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) ...

served as CEO. She left the Open Knowledge Foundation to become the CEO of

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

. Between 2015–2017 Pavel Richter took on the role of CEO of Open Knowledge Foundation. Pavel was formerly Executive Director of

Wikimedia Deutschland Wikimedia chapters are national or sub-national not-for-profit organizations created to promote the interests of Wikimedia projects locally. Chapters are legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, entering into an agreement with the founda ...

. The Open Knowledge Foundation Advisory Council includes people from the areas of

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

open data Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...

, open content, open science,

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is num ...

and

digital rights Digital rights are those human rights and legal rights that allow individuals to access, use, create, and publish digital media or to access and use computers, other electronic devices, and telecommunications networks. The concept is particula ...

. In 2015, it consisted of: * Andrew Stott * Becky Hogge *

Benjamin Mako Hill Benjamin Mako Hill is a free software activist, hacker, author, and professor. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the co-author of three technical manuals on the subject, ''Debia ...

Carolina Rossini Carolina Rossini is a Brazilian-American attorney who focuses on intellectual property, open standard, and data privacy. She is notable for her work in intellectual property law in her native Brazil. In 2016, she was selected as a Young Global L ...

Christopher Corbin Christopher is the English version of a Europe-wide name derived from the Greek name Χριστόφορος (''Christophoros'' or '' Christoforos''). The constituent parts are Χριστός (''Christós''), "Christ" or "Anointed", and φέρει� ...

Daniel Dietrich Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge"Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 68. (cf. Gabriel—"God is my strength" ...

Denis Parfenov Denis Parfenov (russian: Денис Андреевич Парфенов; born 22 September 1987, Moscow) is a Russian political figure and a deputy of the 7th and 8th State Dumas. In 2005, Parvenov joined the Russian Communist Youth Leag ...

Peter Murray-Rust Peter Murray-Rust (born 1941) is a chemist currently working at the University of Cambridge. As well as his work in chemistry, Murray-Rust is also known for his support of open access and open data. Education He was educated at Bootham School ...

Sören Auer Sören is a municipality in the district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Eur ...

Glyn Moody Glyn Moody is a London-based technology writer. He is best known for his book '' Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution'' (2001). It describes the evolution and significance of the free software and open source movements with interview ...

Hannes Gassert Hannes is a masculine given name and a diminutive of Johannes or Hannibal. Hannes may refer to: *Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish chemist and Nobel-prize winner *Hannes Aigner (born 1989), German slalom canoeist and Olympic medalist * Hannes ...

* Lynn M.Combs-Heard * Jordan S. Hatcher *

Jo Walsh Jo, jo, JO, or J.O. may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Jo (film), ''Jo'' (film), a 1972 French comedy * Jo (TV series), ''Jo'' (TV series), a French TV series *"Jo", a song by Goldfrapp from ''Tales of Us'' *"Jo", a song by Mr. Oizo from ''La ...

Mark Surman Mark Surman is a Canadian open internet activist and the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation. He is a leading advocate for trustworthy AI, digital privacy, and the open internet. Before joining the Mozilla Foundation, Mark spent more tha ...

Mayo Fuster Morell Mayo Fuster Morell (born 1975) is a social researcher. Her research has focused on sharing economy, social movements, online communities and digital Commons, frequently using participatory action research and method triangulation. She has been ...

* Nat Torkington * Pieter Colpaert *

Hans Rosling Hans Rosling (; 27 July 1948 – 7 February 2017) was a Swedish physician, academic and public speaker. He was a professor of international health at Karolinska Institute and was the co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which deve ...

John Naughton John Naughton (born 18 July 1946) is an Irish academic, journalist and author. He is a senior research fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University, Director of the Press Fellowship Prog ...

Nigel Shadbolt Sir Nigel Richard Shadbolt (born 9 April 1956) is Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. He is Chairman of the Open Data Institute which he co-founded ...

* Panagiotis Bamidis *

Peter Suber Peter Dain Suber (born November 8, 1951) is a philosopher specializing in the philosophy of law and open access to knowledge. He is a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarl ...

* Yasodara Cordova

Network

As of 2018, Open Knowledge Foundation has 11 official chapters and 38 groups in different countries. In November 2022, the Open Knowledge Network was relaunched with two new projects. It also supports 19 working groups. * Lobbying Transparency *

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

* Open Bibliography *

Open Definition The Open Definition is a document published by the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) (previously Open Knowledge International) to define openness in relation to data and content. It specifies what licences for such material may and may not stipula ...

* Open Design & Hardware * Open Development * Open Economics *

Open Education Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open educa ...

* OpenGLAM * Open Government Data * Open Humanities * Open Linguistics * Open Product Data * Open Science * OpenSpending * Open Sustainability * Open Transport (project) * Personal Data and Privacy *

Public Domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

Operations

Many of Open Knowledge Foundation's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project,

CKAN The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) is an open-source open data portal for the storage and distribution of open data. Being initially inspired by the package management capabilities of Debian Linux, CKAN has developed into a powerfu ...

, is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess. The organisation tends to support its aims by hosting infrastructure for semi-independent projects to develop. This approach to organising was hinted as one of its earliest projects was a project management service called KnowledgeForge, which runs on the KForge platform. ''KnowledgeForge'' allows sectoral

working group A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...

s to have space to manage projects related to open knowledge. More widely, the project infrastructure includes both technical and face-to-face aspects. The organisation hosts several dozen mailing lists for virtual discussion, utilises

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...

for real-time communications and also hosts events.

Advocacy

Open Knowledge Foundation is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources. Open Knowledge Foundation has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness, as well as the

Open Software Service Definition Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * Open (Blues Image album), ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * Open (Gotthard album), ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * Open (C ...

. It also supported the development of the

Open Database License The Open Database License (ODbL) is a copyleft license agreement intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use a database while maintaining this same freedom for others. ODbL is published by Open Data Commons, which is part of Open K ...

(ODbL). Outside of technology, Open Knowledge Foundation plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation and producing guides. Rufus Pollock, one of Open Knowledge Foundation's founders, and current board secretary sits on the

UK government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_es ...

Public Sector Transparency Board The Public Sector Transparency Board was established by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, in June 2010 to drive forward the UK Government's transparency agenda. In November 2015, its functions were taken over by thData Steeri ...

Technical

The foundation places a strong interest in the use of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

technologies. Its software projects are hosted on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

, which utilises the

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

version control software. Some of the projects are listed below: *

, a tool that provides store for metadata. This enables governments to quickly and cheaply provide a catalogue of their data. * Datahub, a community-run catalogue of useful sets of data on the Internet. Depending on the type of data (and its conditions of use), Datahub may also be able to store a copy of the data or host it in a database, and provide some basic visualisation tools. * Frictionless Data, a collection of standards and tools for publishing data. * Open bibliography, broadly construed as efforts to catalogue and build tools for working with and publishing bibliographic resources, with particular emphasis on those works that are in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

and

public domain calculators In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

. Examples include the Bibliographica, Public Domain Works, Open Shakespeare, Open Text Book and

The Public Domain Review ''The Public Domain Review'' is an online journal showcasing works which have entered the public domain. It was co-founded by Jonathan Gray and Adam Green. It was launched on January 1, 2011 to coincide with Public Domain Day. The ''Review'' ...

projects. * OpenGLAM, an initiative that promotes free and open access to

digital cultural heritage Digital heritage is the use of digital media in the service of understanding and preserving cultural or natural heritage.Ann Marie Sullivan, Cultural Heritage & New Media: A Future for the Past, 15 J. MARSHALL REV. INTELL. PROP. L. 604 (2016) https ...

, held by GLAMs: Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. OpenGLAM is co-funded by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

as part of the DM2E (Digitised Manuscripts to

Europeana Europeana is a web portal created by the European Union containing digitised cultural heritage collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe. It includes records of over 50 million cultural and scientific artefacts, brought togethe ...

) project. * Open Economics * Open Knowledge Forums * Information Accessibility Initiative * Open

geodata Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also call ...

* Guide to open data licensing * "Get the Data" — a web-site for questions and answer on how to get data sets. * POD - Product Open Data

Events

Much of the collaboration with other related organisations occurs via events that the foundation hosts. Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held occasionally since 2007. Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation and free information network infrastructure. Annually, Open Knowledge Foundation supports International Open Data Day

Panton Principles and Fellowships (Open data in Science)

The

Panton Principles The ''Panton Principles'' are a set of principles which were written to promote open science. They were first drafted in July 2009 at the Panton Arms pub in Cambridge. History The principles were written by Peter Murray-Rust, Cameron Neylon, Ru ...

(for Open Data in Science) in 2010 had large contributions from Open Knowledge people and in 2011 Jonathan Gray and

successfully obtained funding from OSF for two fellowships, held by Sophie Kershaw and Ross Mounce. In 2013 OKF obtained sponsorship from CCIA for 3 fellowships, which were awarded to Rosemarie Graves, Sam Moore, and Peter Kraker.

Other

Open Knowledge Foundation also supports Apps for Europe, and D-CENT, a European project created to share and organise data from seven countries, which ran from October 2013 to May 2016.

References

External links

*
A self-published history of the Open Knowledge Foundation
{{Authority control Access to Knowledge movement Articles containing video clips Companies based in Cambridge Free and open-source software organizations Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom Non-profit organisations based in the United Kingdom Open content Organisations based in Cambridge Organizations established in 2004 Public domain