Panel: We are Making the Tech We Want

With the skills that the panellists have, it would be easier to work for the mainstream tech industry and just go with the flow. But they’ve all chosen a different path: making software that makes sense. In this conversation, we’ll share the trajectories of some open, free/libre, and alternative technologies, and discuss how to tip the scales in our favour amidst a solutionist discourse in an ultra-specialised industry.

Open Data Editor: Our Open Source Dependency Just Disappeared

The sudden disappearance of this core dependency only reinforces the idea that we should aim to build simpler, less dependent technologies.

The Tech We Want Summit: Review the recordings of what was a great community moment in 2024

The event brought together our beloved community of technologists, practitioners and creators for two days to show that a different technology stack is possible.

The Tech We Want Summit: Full Programme Announcement

The Tech We Want Summit is just around the corner. Today we are announcing the full programme for day one, Thursday 17 October, featuring 28 speakers from all around the world across 5 panels and 2 keynotes.

The Open Data Editor is now ready for the pilot phase

This week saw the release of version 1.1.0 of the Open Data Editor (ODE), the new Open Knowledge Foundation’s app that makes it easier for people with little to no technical skills to work with data. The app is now ready to enter a crucial phase of user testing.

Unlocking the Power of Data for Peace: Highlights from the Policy Driver Document for Data Accessibility and User-Friendliness in Peacebuilding

In July 2024, peacebuilders, activists, academics, third sector and staff from intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations and the OSCE, came together for a policy hackathon at the Austrian Forum for Peace Conference in Burgenland near the Hungarian border.

Join us at The Tech We Want Summit and take a critical stand on today’s technologies

Today we are happy to announce The Tech We Want, a series of initiatives that we’ve been working on for a long time at the Open Knowledge Foundation and that has been guiding us in the way we develop software. In recent years, technology has adopted a complex, wasteful, and expensive approach to serving its […]

CKAN 2.11: Hypermedia approach for the tech we want

The new version integrates HTMX to CKAN and opens up the way for creating dynamic user interfaces.

The European Union must keep funding free software

Open Letter to the European Commission

Open Data Editor: The tormented journey of an app

Project Manager Sara Petti gives a behind-the-scenes account of the development of ODE at csv,conf,v8 – a journey full of lessons learned.

We are telling G7 leaders that the AI infrastructure must be open

We are concerned about a closed digital future where only a few elites can seize the power of AI for private purposes. Our contribution to the Think7 Italy Summit (T7) is trying to change that.

Open Data Editor: 5 tips for building data products that work for people

As announced in January, this year the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) team is working to develop a stable version of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application. Thanks to financial support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we will be able to create a no-code tool for data manipulation and publishing that is accessible to everyone, […]

Open Data Editor: meet the team behind the app

Join us on this learning journey and follow the details of the app’s development in this series of blogs.

Open Data Editor: what we learned from user research

Join us on this learning journey and follow the details of the app’s development in this series of blogs.

Angela Oduor Lungati: ‘When embracing open source, one must be intentional about being inclusive’

The Executive Director of Ushahidi joins us for the ninth #OKFN100, a series of conversations about the challenges and opportunities facing the open movement.

Frictionless DarwinCore Tool by André Heughebaert

This blog is part of a series showcasing projects developed during the 2019 Frictionless Data Tool Fund. The 2019 Frictionless Data Tool Fund provided four mini-grants of $5,000 to support individuals or organisations in developing an open tool for reproducible research built using the Frictionless Data specifications and software. This fund is part of the […]

csv,conf returns for version 5 in May

Save the date for csv,conf,v5! The fifth version of csv,conf will be held at the University of California, Washington Center in Washington DC, USA, on May 13 and 14, 2020. If you are passionate about data and its application to society, this is the conference for you. Submissions for session proposals for 25-minute talk […]

Public money? Public code!

If taxpayers pay for something, they should have access to the results of the work they paid for. This seems a very logical basic premise that no-one would disagree with, but there are many cases of where this is not common practice. For example, in various countries Freedom of Information laws do not fully apply to cases where governments […]

Git for Data Analysis – why version control is essential for collaboration and for gaining public trust.

Openness and collaboration go hand in hand. Scientists at PNNL are working with the Frictionless Data team at Open Knowledge International to ensure collaboration on data analysis is seamless and their data integrity is maintained. I’m a computational biologist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where I work on environmental and biomedical research. In […]

Open source in everyday life: How we celebrated the Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru

The free and open source software (FOSS) enthusiasts just celebrated the Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 all across the world. This year, a small group of six of us gathered to celebrate SFD in the Indian city of Bengaluru. The group consisted of open source contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, […]

Why Open Source Software Matters for Government and Civic Tech – and How to Support It

Today we’re publishing a new white paper looking at whether free/open source software matters for government and civic tech. Matters in the sense that it should have a deep and strategic role in government IT and policy rather than just being a “nice to have” or something “we use when we can”. As the paper shows the […]

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