Vision/Existing

= OKF Vision: Existing Ideas and Material =

Published Material

 * http://www.okfn.org/about/
 * http://www.okfn.org/governance/
 * http://www.okfn.org/roadmap/

The Purpose of the Foundation
From articles of association:

The objects for which the Company is established are:-

a) To promote the openness of all forms of knowledge where knowledge is taken to include information, data and all other synonymous terms.

''b) In particular
 * 1) To promote freedom of access, creation and dissemination of knowledge.
 * 2) To develop, support and promote projects, communities and tools that foster and facilitate the creation, access to and dissemination of knowledge.
 * 3) To campaign against restrictions both legal and non-legal on the creation, access to and dissemination of knowledge.''

In retrospect b.3 has not been less significant and perhaps would have been better put as: promote awareness of the benefits of openness and difficulties caused by restrictions ...

Specifically we:


 * Promote idea of openness
 * Events
 * Working groups
 * Services and projects

From front page:

Founded in 2004 we're a not-for-profit organization promoting open knowledge: that's any kind of information – sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata – that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed. Find out more »

We organize events like OKCon, run projects like Open Shakespeare, and develop tools like CKAN and KnowledgeForge to help people create, find and share open material. See our full list of events and projects.

How Do We Want To Operate?
Community of volunteers/projects (+ some central funding for coordination and specific projects) or centrally funded with some volunteers? Preference is for the former: (from http://www.okfn.org/board/meetings/2009-05-16)

''The OKFN Board reiterated its desire for the organisation to grow as a collaborative community, serviced by an agile, lightweight core. Its vision for the organisation is one that supports autonomous projects, loosely joined by their endorsement and promotion of open knowledge, as set out in the open knowledge definition.''

See also the existing governance document written when Foundation founded.

Existing organizational models to think about:


 * 1) Debian/Apache
 * 2) Public Knowledge
 * 3) Creative Commons
 * 4) * Focused on legal and fairly centralized.
 * 5) EFF/ORG?
 * 6) * No, we are not a campaigning or activist organization directly. We don't do press (really) and we don't see our primary goal as engagement with policymakers.
 * 7) Wikipedia