[Imc-alternatives] Forward from Suber (Open Source net) on Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Net

[Dwight Hines]

I think it would be synergistic to link with  CKAN and Open Source.

Dwight

Message-Id: <7.0.1.0.2.20070705131550.0274bbc8 at arl.org>
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:15:58 -0400
From: Peter Suber <peters at earlham.edu>
Subject: Launch of the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN)

[Forwarding from the Open Knowledge Foundation.  --Peter.]


~~ The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) Launched ~~

<http://blog.okfn.org/2007/07/04/the-comprehensive-knowledge-archive-network=
-ckan-launched-today/>

After a year of (off and on) development we are
delighted today to announce the official launch
of the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network
(CKAN for short): http://www.ckan.net/.

CKAN is a registry of open knowledge packages and
projects    be that a set of Shakespeare=92s works,
a global population density database, the voting
records of MPs, or 30 years of US patents.

CKAN is the place to search for open knowledge
resources as well as register your own. Those
familiar with freshmeat (a registry of open
source software), CPAN (Perl) or PyPI (python
package index) can think of CKAN as providing an
analogous service for open knowledge.


### FAQ

#### What kinds of things do you expect people to register in CKAN?

Anything and everything -- when we say knowledge
we mean any kind of content, data or information.
That said there are two main recommendations regarding what you register:

  * First, we are looking for people to register
'packages' that is collections with some kind of
structure rather than individual items. So a
substantial set of photos, a datasets of all
kinds, the writings of Shakespeare but not an
individual blog, or your flickr photo collection.
  * Second, we're looking for stuff that's
[open](http://www.opendefinition.org/): that is it's

#### Why Not Just Use the Creative Commons Search Facility in=
 Google/Yahoo/etc

Two main reasons:

  1. We focus on work that is
[open](http://www.opendefinition.org/). Simply
put the set of open work and the set of
CC-licensed works are not identical because (a)
not all Creative Commons licensed work is open
(for example those which use the non-commercial
provision are not) and (b) there are plenty of
open works which do not use CC licenses (e.g. Wikipedia)

  2. The registry is designed to support holding
much more metadata than simply whether the work
is open on not. In particular we want to be able
to support automated installation of knowledge
packages in the future (which requires things
like dependency and version information).

#### Is CKAN itself open?

Of course, both the code that CKAN runs on and
the data itself is open, see the license page:=
 <http://www.ckan.net/license/>.

#### How Can I Get Involved

Start enter things into CKAN and editing existing
entries -- you don't need to be the developer of
a particular project or resource to enter it into the registry.

If you want to get more deeply involved join the
okfn-discuss list and and introduce yourself or
just drop an email to info [at] okfn [dot] org.
If you want to just start hacking with the code
see our development project page (then follow the links to subversion):

  <http://www.knowledgeforge.net/project/ckan/>

#### Who is Behind This?

CKAN is currently developed and maintained by the
Open Knowledge Foundation (http://www.okfn.org)
but involvement is welcomed from all quarters.
Furthermore all data and code is open so that
anybody can use and reuse the material.

#### CKAN and Componentization

CKAN is a key part of the Open Knowledge
Foundation's long-term roadmap
(http://www.okfn.org/roadmap/) and completes our
work on the first layer of open knowledge tools:

  * The Open Knowledge Definition:
http://www.opendefinition.org/ which sets out what we mean by open=
 knowledge.
  * KForge/KnowledgeForge:
http://www.knowledgeforge.net/ which provide a
system for managing open knowledge projects and
the services (repositories/wikis/mailing lists) they need.
  * The Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network
(CKAN):  which provides a registry so that open
knowledge creators and users can find other open
knowledge projects and resources.

CKAN links in especially closely with recent
discussions of componentization. We envision a
future in which open knowledge is provided in a
much more componentized form (packages) so as to
facilitate greater reuse and recombination
similar to what occurs with software today (see
the recent XTech presentation for more details).
For this to occur we need to make it much easier
for people to share, find, download, and =91plug
into=92 the open knowledge packages that are
produced. An essential first step in achieving
this is to have a metadata registry where people
can register their work and where relevant
metadata (both structured and unstructured) can be gradually added over=
 time.