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Open Source Biology Initiative
Nick dos Remedios writes "The Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) initiative aims to make biological technology more readily available to biologists everywhere. The latest genetics and biology tools should be freely available to researchers over the internet, but instead access is typically restricted by commercial patents and prohibitive licensing fees. BIOS and its associated BioForge aims to overcome these restrictions to innovation by encouraging companies and public sector research organizations to contribute their research tools and technologies to the BioForge repository. In return, users of the technology are bound by an open source license to share all improvements with the original inventors and other license holders."
Insightful my ass. This isn't about consumer or business software - this is about software produced by the scientific community, for use by the scientific community. By definition, this software has to be open to peer review and not subject to insidious licensing terms in order to be useful. What good is a piece of research software, for example, whose EULA assigns all patents derived from its use to the author's university?
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