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Annual Report, 2007-2008

Annual Report, 2007-2008

Another busy year for the Open Knowledge Foundation. We launched several new projects, including the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN), Open Environmental Data and Open Text Book. The KForge suite was significantly updated, and the Public Domain Works joined up with the Internet Archive's Open Library project.

With input from the open knowledge community, we created a draft Open Service Definition - and established an Advisory Council to maintain and develop the material on okfn.org. A draft Guide to Open Data Licensing was published, and our work in this area fed into the development of new legal tools for making data open.

In addition to a great line up of speakers at OKCon 2009, we started a local group in London, and hosted a hands-on workshop on open-source visualisation technologies.

We had the pleasure of welcoming Jordan Hatcher and Prodromos Tsiavos to our Executive Group and Dr Sören Auer to our Advisory Board.

An enormous thank you to all of you who have participated in discussions and events, contributed to projects, helped with bits of code and cunning suggestions, and have otherwise donated time, space, and energy to keeping the Foundation ticking - we're powered on your input and ideas!

The Open Knowledge Foundation<<BR>> May 2008 # Events and Activities ## OKCon 2008:

This year's annual Open Knowledge Conference, OKCon 2008, took place on 15th March at London School of Economics. The event brought together individuals and groups from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of seminars and workshops. Speakers included:

  • Gavin Starks (AMEE and dgen)
  • Tom Steinberg (mySociety)
  • Dr Muki Haklay (Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London)
  • Liz Turner (Freelance Designer and Visualizer Extraordinaire)
  • Gael Varoquaux (Mayavi2 - the next Generation Visualization Toolkit)
  • Martin Albrecht (SAGE the Open Source Mathematics Engine)
  • Erik Duval (ARIADNE)
  • Lisa Petrides (OER Commons)
  • Dr Martin Brett (Cambridge University History Department and the Ivo Project)

Jordan Hatcher also launched the Public Domain Dedication & License (PDDL) at the event - a legal tool to make data open, specifically taking into account rights in data such as the European Database Directive.

Audio, images and slides are available at the Post-Event Information page.

We organised an informal, hands-on workshop for those who work with, or are interested in, open-source visualisation technologies - which took place at Trampoline Systems. There were talks and demos from:

  • Martin Dittus, last.fm
  • Julie Tolmie, Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London
  • Jan Berkel, Trampoline Systems
  • Jonathan Lister, Osmosoft
  • Gregory Jordan, European Bioinformatics Institute
  • David Aanensen, Division of Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care, Imperial College London
  • Jonathan Gray, The Open Knowledge Foundation

In addition to the Cambridge open knowledge local group, a group was established in London with 44 people. The first meeting was held in the London Knowledge Lab.

We participated in numerous events throughout the UK and Europe, including:

The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) - a registry for open knowledge packages and projects - was launched in July 2007. Version 0.5 was released in February 2008 and in April 2008 it was featured in the Read Write Web article "Where to Find Open Data on the Web". By May 2008 there were 180 user contributed packages.

KForge, the suite of tools for managing software and knowledge projects, went into version 0.13 in August 2007 and 0.14 in September 2007. The KnowledgeForge service, which runs on KForge, hosts over 50 projects.

In December 2007, the OKF responded to the Library of Congress report on the 'Future of Bibilographic Control' making the case that they should promote open licensing for bibliographic metadata. Over 150 groups and individuals co-signed the response, including:

  • Lawrence Lessig, Founder, Creative Commons
  • Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive
  • Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO O’Reilly Media
  • Tim Spalding, Founder, Library Thing
  • Peter Suber, Senior Researcher, The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
  • John Wonderlich, Program Director and John Brothers, CTO, Sunlight Foundation
  • Paul Miller, Rob Styles, Terry Willan, Talis
  • Rick and Megan Prelinger, Prelinger Library & Archives
  • … and librarians, system librarians, catalogers, assistant librarians, library support staff, library users, library school lecturers and students, consultants, academics and software developers from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, the Ukraine, the UK and the US.

We have continued to monitor policies and developments in this area and to promote open licensing and liberal terms of use for bibliographic data.

In June 2007, the Foundation launched a Guide to Open Data Licensing - which examined legal options for data in different jurisdictions, and included input from the OAK Law Project at Queensland University of Technology.

In July 2007, we wrote about the need for an Open Service Definition, which sparked discussions leading to a first draft in September.

In December 2007, Science Commons launched its Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data - which refers to the Open Knowledge Definition (OKD). CC0 and the Public Domain Dedication & License were also announced - both of which are OKD comformant.

February 2008 saw the launch of an Advisory Council to maintain and develop the Definitions and associated material found on the Open Definition site, which included:

  • Paul Jacobson, iCommons
  • Paul Miller, Talis
  • Peter Murray-Rust, Cambridge University
  • Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation & Cambridge University
  • Rob Styles, Talis
  • Peter Suber, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) & Earlham College
  • Luis Villa, Columbia Law School, GNOME Foundation & Open Source Initiative
  • Jo Walsh, Open Knowledge Foundation & Open Source Geo-Spatial Foundation
  • John Wilbanks, Science Commons

The Open Knowledge Definition was translated into Danish, Polish, Catalan, Spanish and Basque. 'Open Knowledge' and 'Open Data' buttons are now used by a wide variety of open projects - including Crystal Eye, Geocoder US, DBpedia, AMEE, Govtrack, Quotations Book, DBTune, NPEmaps, Languages of the World, (lingvoj), the Prelinger Archives, Musicbrainz, and the omdb.

In November 2007 we started the Open Environmental Data project, which aims to document public domain and other freely reusable environmental datasets. The project aims to provide an overview of relevant research organisations, data distributors and free/open source software, as well as summarising law and policies specifically pertaining to environmental data.

Work commenced on digitising the 1911 article on Shakespeare in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In April 2008 there was a Mini Hackathon on Open Shakespeare and its new sister site, Open Milton.

The Open Text Book project - a registry of open textbook - was launched in June 2007. By April 2008 it contained details on over 40 books.

In June 2007 we released a list of composers whose work has fallen into the public domain - extracted from donated datasets. August 2007 saw the alpha launch of Public Domain Works. In October the project joined the Internet Archive's Open Library project.

May 2007

  • Talk at XTech

June 2007

  • iCommons
  • Open Textbook Launched
  • Guide to Open Data Licensing
  • List of composers on Public Domain Works
  • Launch of Open Text Book

July 2007

  • CKAN launched

August 2007

  • KForge v0.13 Released

September 2007

  • Draft Open Service Definition
  • Law 2.0
  • KForge v0.14 Released

October 2007

  • Public Domain Works joins the Open Library

November 2007

  • Open Lean 2007
  • Gerald Aylmer Seminar 2007
  • Open Environmental Data launched

December 2007

  • PDDL, CC0 and Protocol for Open Access Data
  • Response to Library of Congress draft report "The Future of Bibliographic Control"

January 2008

  • Talk at first COMMUNIA workshop

February 2008

  • CKAN 0.5 Released
  • Oxford Geek Night
  • Open Definition Advisory Council launched
  • Danish Translation of Open Knowledge Definition
  • Polish Translation of Open Knowledge Definition

March 2008 * Catalan and Spanish Translations of the Open Knowledge Definition * Basque Translation of the Open Knowledge Definition * OKCon 2008

April 2008 * COST A32 Meeting * Open Knowledge London Meetup * Open Shakespeare Hackathon # People

Executive Group * Saul Albert * Jonathan Gray * Jordan Hatcher * Rufus Pollock * Prodromos Tsiavos * Jo Walsh

Board of Directors * Rufus Pollock * Martin Keegan * James Noyes * Natasha Phillips

Advisory Board * Dr Sören Auer * Dr Tim Hubbard * Paula Le Dieu * Benjamin Mako Hill * Dr Peter Murray-Rust * Professor John Naughton * Professor Peter Suber * John Wilbanks

Let's build together a world where all knowledge is accessible to everyone
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