Abbreviation | OKI |
---|---|
Formation | 20 May 2004 |
Founder | Rufus Pollock |
Type | Nonprofit organization |
05133759 | |
Focus | Open knowledge broadly, including open access, open content, open science and open data |
Location |
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Coordinates | 52°14′08″N 0°09′15″E / 52.235435°N 0.154033°ECoordinates: 52°14′08″N 0°09′15″E / 52.235435°N 0.154033°E |
Area served
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International |
Key people
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Rufus Pollock |
Slogan | Sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata ... |
Website | okfn |
Open Knowledge International (OKI) (known as the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) until April 2014, then Open Knowledge until May 2016) 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 on 24 May 2004 in Cambridge, UK.
The aims of Open Knowledge International are:
In April 2015 Pavel Richter took on the role of CEO of Open Knowledge International. Pavel was formerly Executive Director of . Pollock remains in a leadership role.
The Open Knowledge International Advisory Council includes people from the areas of open access, open data, open content, open science, data visualization and digital rights. In 2015, it consisted of:
As of 2015, Open Knowledge International has 9 official chapters and 49 groups in different countries.
It also supports 19 working groups.
Many of Open Knowledge International's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project, CKAN, 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 groups 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 for real-time communications and also hosts events.
Open Knowledge International is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources.
Open Knowledge International 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. It also supported the development of the Open Database License (ODbL).