Open-Source Biology

nicholast writes with this "article describing the growing use of open-source collaboration methods in biology. The subtitle and main question is: Can a band of biologists who share data freely out-innovate the corporate researchers who hoard it?"

Comments

Open Source Biology isn't limited to biogenetics

[jfrumkin]

For instance, we're doing an open source phylogenetic project called The Tree of Life, which promotes both the open access to phylogenetic information, and open source software through the code itself. Many biologists are using open source software to further their research - case in point in O'Reilly's recent Bioinformatics conference.

Out-compete - not really relevant

[blakestah]

Can a band of biologists who share data freely out-innovate the corporate researchers who hoard it?"

Competition is sometimes relevant, but not in general. The scientist seeks to further the knowledge base, to reinforce his hypotheses, and their sub-hypotheses, etc. The corporation wants to make money.

Now, the scientist, in his quest to further knowledge, has no responsibility to avoid the intellectual property of others. If something is copyrighted, he cites it. If something is patented, he uses it anyway for research, with no necessity to pay to use the patent (unless, of course, there is no other way to get the invention).

The corporation, in its quest to make more money, need not even establish that something will work before it can establish IP. Knowledge is not directly relevant - they only need to set up tolls on the highway to commerce in the form of patents and copyright.

Sometimes, conflict exists. Celera is patenting genes, but only if they find them before NIH (which makes their database public). But in general the goals are different, patents can come from the work of scientists without interfering in the future work of the scientist (it is important to avoid conflicts of interest, usually by the scientist having no control or material interest in patent licensing - this is often not the case), and corporations establish their tolls without even paying attention to knowledge.

Pretty ignorant article

[Otter]

Two points:

1) The idea of sharing information within and beyond the scientific community is hardly a new one. On the contrary, if anything secrecy has increased in recent decades, partly because of industrial applications but mostly becuase science is much bigger and more cutthroat than when it was a wealthy gentleman's pursuit.

The sort of collaboration described here is new and is driven by the Internet and by the large data sets in current biology. But to say that scientists got the idea to share information from Linus Torvalds is idiotic. That's not even where computer scientists got the idea.

2) Claiming that patents encourage "hoarding" of information is the sort of thing you expect to see in +1 Slashdot comments. The whole point of patents is to _encourage_ the sharing of information instead of relying on secrecy. Inventors trade disclosure for a temporary monopoly.

Again, there's a germ of truth here that companies after a patentable discovery need to be closed-mouthed about their progress, but that's probably given the author too much credit.