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."

Comments

Re:ummm

[pe1rxq]

Unfortunatly large medicine producing companies don't agree with you....
In the current system your illness isn't likely to be cured soon unless there is a significant market for the cure.
Add to that the moron that came up with the idea to allow genes to be patented and you get a nice world to live in.

If only a few governments (rich & developped) would have the guts to make cheap drugs and good research possible without wanting profits. (There will be profits ofcourse, but not in a monetairy sense)

Jeroen

bioinformatics.org?

[dan dan the dna man]

Doesn't this mostly just duplicate the efforts of bioinformatics.org?

"The Bioinformatics Organization, Inc. (Bioinformatics.Org) was founded to facilitate world-wide communications and collaborations between practicing and neophyte bioinformatic scientists and technicians. The Organization provides these individuals, as well as the public at large, free and open access to methods and materials for and from scientific research, software development, and education. We advocate and promote freedom and openness in the field as well as provide a forum for activities which facilitate the development of such resources."

This is just another example of someone trying to carve out a niche in the "hot" area of bioinformatics - the same way as this profusion of Live-CD's for Bioinformatics. It seems to me it's all quite divisive. Bioinformatics models itself on the OSS movement for the most part, but its inherent bindings with industry means there seems to be a lot of people trying to make names for themselves with "projects" even if it means duplicating the effort of someone else.

(Yes I am a bioinformatician)..

Re:Me

[lovebyte]

Having worked for a pharma and now being in the public research sector, I know you are right. R&D represents 1/3 of the total budget of pharmas, of which Research is a 1/3.
Nowadays, most new drugs are not coming from pharmas but from biotechs anyway. What pharmas are good at is Development which costs 100s of millions of dollars/euros, takes years and signals the death of most potential drugs coming out of research.

Can anyone explain to me who will pay for development if there are no patents? The only way pharmas can make money is by having the exclusivity on a drug for some time. If you can see another way, please tell me what it is.

yeah, I don't understand this

[Trepidity]

Merely discovering things that exist in nature in any other field is not patentable.

If I am inspired by some strange cave formation and design a new method of supporting buildings around it, perhaps I can patent it the particular method of supporting buildings. But I can't just patent the cave formation after discovering it and sue anyone who then applies any principles contained therein to anything.