Coming Wednesday a new foundation is launched aiming to stimulate a society in which technology, educational materials, and cultural and scientific works can be freely shared. The organisation receives the support from the Internet Society Netherlands....
The Free Knowledge Institute is an initiative from three Amsterdam-based professionals who currently work for Internet Society Netherlands. In the past years ISOC.nl coordinated a large-scale EU-project SELF which embraced the same objectives. The need to share knowledge freely has become so important that the institute now turns into an independent organisation.
"More and more governments realise the benefits of free knowledge and free information technology", says Wouter Tebbens, the president of the new institute. The Free Knowledge Institute intends to be a knowledge partner helping to show the way in available free knowledge and technology. "That way, we can elaborate on the existing pool of free knowledge and free software, which is growing enormously. Look at projects such as Wikipedia, Linux, and the internet itself", Tebbens states. "Why reinvent the wheel yet again?"
Its main lines of activity are Free Knowledge in technology, education, culture and science. Free Knowledge in education focuses on the production and dissemination of free educational materials; Free Knowledge in IT mainly refers to free software, open standards and open hardware; Free Knowledge in culture includes open content; and Free Knowledge in science includes open access and anti-privatisation of scientific knowledge....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
