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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."
In my opinion, all research should be this way in fields that are directly related to the betterment of our health. Who would object?
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
Sadly, the most pressing problem isn't the availabilty of biological tools, but the fact that researchers are being allowed to gain patents on their genome sequences, even though such people as The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are against it. They've no problem with patented gene therapies, but patenting the genes themselves is just a horrible thing for cutting edge science.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I like this free kick we are on. I think everything should be free. No one should be allowed to make or invent anything that isn't open source, (at least that I want to use). I would ever have to spend money again. Of course I couldn't make any money either, seeing as how everything is free. The up side is that I wouldn't have to work anymore because I don't have to pay for anything. But then who is working to make my bread if everything is free?
Somethings have to be possessions of an individual, so that we can charge others to use them and make money ourselves. Jealousy or envy is not a reason to force someone to give something up. If you can make a saleble product from the tools you need, then buy the tools. OTherwise I would venture to guess that it is not worth doing to begin with. Gosh, I had to buy a computer to write code with, what a horrible thing that I had to pay for a tool that should be free!
Typically for academic institutions, you publish all of your techniques including changes that you made to the protocol to get your results. This, and the willingness to share and explain your approach, is called good science.
The problem comes when you try to open up approaches done by commercial companies. Many of these companies spent years putting together the kits that they sell. Only the restrictive licensing and patents allow them to fully recoup their losses.
Take Amaxa for example. They supply an electroporation kit that works wonders for expressing constructs in cells. Unfortunately each kit costs $300 for 25 transfections. My lab typically goes through 3 of these every 2.5 weeks. Now if Amaxa would just tell us what the composition of the buffers are, that is all that I need to put together my own electroporation system and save my lab at least 15k a year! As a downside, Amaxa would cease to exist. What would be the point of having a biotech company that develops new techniques? Selling support? Please.