Package: ckan [edit] [history]

Openness:
This package is open This package is open

Metadata:

Notes:

FAQ

If you have any questions about CKAN not answered here please post on the mailing list or direct to info [at] okfn [dot] org.

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 (unless it is really big!).
  • Second, we're looking for stuff that's open: that is material that people are free to use, reuse and redistribute without restriction (other than, perhaps, a requirement to share-alike).

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

Two main reasons:

  1. We focus on work that is open. 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/

Can I add packages in languages other than English?

You can add information about packages in any language though it would be useful to note this using a tag. You can also use any language when adding information.