Over the last couple of years we’ve done a lot of work to get a clear and clean definition of what open knowledge is in the form of the Open Knowledge Definition. This provides a core set of principles defining openness independent of any particular set of licenses similar to the way the open source definition does for open source software.

But suppose you’ve got some material, for example, some geodata, shakespeare’s works or even some economic statistics, and the material is open. How can you easily indicate that?

The answer is simple, use some of the open knowledge/open data web buttons we’ve been busy creating:

Open Knowlege Button
Open Knowlege Button
Open Knowlege Button

Open Knowlege Button
Open Knowlege Button

There are a variety of colours and shapes and you can check out the full range here: http://m.okfn.org/images/ok_buttons/ (Note: The file demo.html in that directory displays all the buttons side by side).

To add an open knowledge button to your page:

  1. [optional] Download the button you want to use (just navigate to the directory linked above, click on the button you want and then choose Save As)

  2. Add this piece of html to your page replacing ${button-url} with the url for the button (either the place where you downloaded the button in the previous step or the url of the button on m.okfn.org)

    <!-- Open Knowledge Link -->
    <a href="http://okd.okfn.org/">
      <img alt="This material is Open Knowlege" border="0"
      src="${button-url}" /></a>
    <!-- /Open Knowledge Link -->
    

This should produce something like:


This material is Open Knowlege

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Rufus Pollock is Founder and President of Open Knowledge.