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Extending the free software paradigm to DIY Biology

Posted by scrubs on · 5 comments
Free Software Magazine; By Gary Richmond 		Mail this story
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Some time ago I wrote an article about Jim Kent, an American biologist who used free and open software to race Craig Ventnor to the finishing line, sequencing the human genome. That was very big, cutting edge science with a global audience and reach. We live in an age when big science is done, overwhelmingly, in big businesses, universities, research labs and government laboratories. In Eric Raymond’s paradigm it is the culture of the Cathedral. Hierarchical, big, controlled and funded by taxpayers, venture capital or shareholders. The time of the amateur dilletante scientist seems to be over. It takes the huge, collective organisation of private individuals to challenge this monopoly. GNU/Linux has managed to make a significant challenge but what of open science, not just the actual use of free software as practised by CERN but utilizing the whole philosophy of organizing scientific endeavour on the principles of open source? Some amateur biohackers think they have the answer. Read the full article at Free Software Magazine.

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Comments (5)

vainrveenr ·
As of approximately 5:00 PM GMT, the link for this Newswire piece is timing out. Same for its main site, http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com

Sander_Marechal ·
Did we LXer them? ;-)

Hopefully it will be back soon.
vainrveenr ·
Main freesoftwaremagazine site still inaccessible Jun 04, 2009 07:00 GMT; that's almost the entire day that this was posted and already part of the next ! Not only that, but other external sites somehow link-up/ "LXer" back to this and the target one.

Is it time yet for the piece contributed by 'scrubs' to be pulled ???

Sander_Marechal ·
Hmm... I don't suppose anyone knows one of the FSM editors and has an e-mail address for me that doesn't end in freesoftwaremagazine.com?

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