The intellectual property considerations of the Open Knowledge Initiative are an important dimension of the project.

Open Licensing

O.K.I.'s goal is to develop open architecture solutions for widespread adoption by educational institutions. Participation in the initiative demonstrates a strong belief in the project's philosophy, that all contributions to the project are individually recognized and attributed, but these contributions are licensed as part of an open-licensing system.

Commercial Solutions

O.K.I. is also working closely with educational software vendors to ensure that the O.K.I. architectural specifications will work with their own commercially licensed systems. O.K.I. will support proprietary technology and encourage commercial design of innovative tools, in keeping with the overall goal of global improvement in the management and design of educational technology.

Licensing Strategy

The O.K.I. project will operate using two separate licenses:

MIT-O.K.I. API Definition License applies to the APIs that will be released by the Open Knowledge Initiative. This license is designed to ensure the centralized standardization of API definitions among all adopters. It promotes broad distribution of the APIs, but discourages modification of the API definitions.

MIT-O.K.I. API Implementation License applies to the implementations and exemplar applications that will be released through the O.K.I. project. This license is designed to encourage the widespread sharing of innovation among adopters, so it promotes the open distribution and modification of implementations and exemplar applications

Warranty, Copyright and Trademark

Detailed information pertaining to the warranty, copyright, and trademark policies of the O.K.I. project can be found in the MIT-O.K.I. API licenses.