Open Knowledge Foundation
non-profit organization promoting free and reusable access to knowledge
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 on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge, England. It is incorporated in England and Wales as a private company limited by guarantee. 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 CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation in October 2021.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Open Knowledge Foundation” is non-profit organization promoting free and reusable access to knowledge. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Knowledge, Foundation and non-profit, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “non-profit organization promoting free and reusable access to knowledge” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q233015. VIAF identifies the subject as 200830293. The Library of Congress control number is no2011181896. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2016, 2019 and 2021.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Open Knowledge Foundation”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Open Knowledge Foundation primary sources, Open Knowledge Foundation archive and Knowledge research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Open Knowledge Foundation”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Open Knowledge Foundation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.