Rufus Pollock

Rufus Pollock
Pollock in 2017
Born1980 (age 43–44)
Alma mater
Scientific career
ThesisShould We Give Every Cow Its Calf? Monopoly, Competition and Transaction Costs in the Promotion of Innovation and Creativity (2008)
Doctoral advisor
Websiterufuspollock.com

Rufus Pollock (born 1980) is a British economist, activist and social entrepreneur.

He has been a leading figure in the global open knowledge and open data movements, starting with his founding in 2004 of the non-profit Open Knowledge Foundation which he led until 2015. From 2007–2010 he was the Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and from 2010–2013 he was a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow.[2][3][4] In 2012 was appointed an Ashoka Fellow[5] and remains an Associate of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Cambridge[4] and continues to serve on the board of Open Knowledge International. Since leaving Open Knowledge International, his work has moved to focus more on broader issues of social transformation and in 2016 he co-founded a new non-profit "Life Itself".[6] However, he has continued to work actively on the economics and politics of the information age, including publishing "The Open Revolution: Rewriting the Rules of the Information Age" in 2018.[7]

Whilst at Open Knowledge International he initiated a variety of projects, many of which continue to be active. In 2005 he created The Open Definition which provided the first formal definition of open content and open data, and which has remained the standard reference definition. In 2005–06 he created the first version of CKAN, open source software for finding and sharing datasets, especially open datasets. CKAN has evolved and is the leading open data platform software in the world, used by governments including the US and UK, to publish millions of public datasets.

He helped to lead or co-found other organizations including Open Rights Group (2005, co-founder and board member), Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (2005-6, UK director),[8][9] Creative Commons UK, Datopian (founder) and Life Itself (co-founder).[10]

  1. ^ "Oundle Lecture: The Second Renaissance". Oundle School. 23 June 2023.
  2. ^ "Shuttleworth Fellowship". Rufus Pollock. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
  3. ^ "Rufus Pollock ─ Open data, open knowledge". Shuttleworth Foundation. September 2010. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
  4. ^ a b "Open Knowledge: Staff". Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  5. ^ "Rufus Pollock". ashoka.
  6. ^ "Wise Society · Rufus Pollock Online". rufuspollock.com. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ FFII (4 July 2005). "SMEs call on European Parliament to protect them from software patents". FFII. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
  9. ^ FFII (6 July 2005). "European Parliament says no to software patents". FFII. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
  10. ^ "People". Life Itself. 9 March 2020. Retrieved 7 November 2020.