We Believe in the Power of Openness

We seek a world in which open knowledge is ubiquitous and routine – both online and offline. We promote open knowledge because of its potential to deliver far-reaching societal benefits which include the following:

• Better governance: openness improves governance through increased transparency and engagement.
• Better culture: openness means greater access, sharing and participation in relation to cultural material and activities.
• Better research: for research to function effectively, and for society to reap the full benefits from research activities, research outputs should be open.
• Better economy: openness permits easier and more rapid reuse of material and open data and content are the key raw ingredients for the development of new innovative tools and services.

What is Open Knowledge?

Open knowledge is any material — whether it is content, data or information-based — which anyone is free to use, re-use and redistribute without restriction. For more details about how we define openness, see the Open Definition.

We promote the creation, dissemination and use of open knowledge in all its forms, from genes to geodata and from sonnets to statistics. Our projects, groups and tools work with this principle in different and varying ways to increase user access and ensure transparency.

How we operate

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a community. This community is open to everyone and is organised as a meritocracy based on open discussion and tolerance.

Running through all of our activities is a strong emphasis on decentralized collaboration. In particular, a primary aim is to help others develop open material as well as creating it ourselves. We believe that the future lies in collaboration between a multitude of different groups and that no one group or organisation can, or should try to, “do it all”. It is when we work together that we are the strongest.