At all the companies I have worked at that use OSS have all taken something, improved it because they had a specific need for the improvement, then released the improvements. Our company is planning to do some optimizations to several OS statistical packages. However, the only reason we are going to do it, is because we need it to be faster.
As other people have pointed out, the internally developed stuff will most likely stay internal because it is poorly written/documented or would be to valuable to give away for free.
That said, if our company fails completely (ie not sold, just shuts its doors), I will advocate that the products be open sourced, because they very well could be.
And it is not a natural path to go from CS to bioinformatics.
Then why are you on/.?
Hmmm. Not sure. Beause the converse of my statement is surely: Bioinformatics people have no interest in programming, linux, etc. Actually, it's a little known fact that all bioinformatics is still done with pencil and paper (we can't even use calculators, the Patriot Act forbids it).
So...does your company produce crappy software or good software?
Most of our customers say good. The people who disagree do so mainly because it lacks a feature they want. Which is a huge problem with bioinformatics software - most do far too many things and none of them particularly well. A terrible side affect of this, is it makes them overly complex, often to the point of unusable by only a very experienced bioinformatitician or very savvy computer user. As the nature of certain types of experiments matures and becomes cheaper (microarrays for instance), the amount of analysis features you need actually lessens because you can design better experiments. Early software was complex because the experiments were very expensive and the inability to to replicates necessitated the need for complex statistical analysis. Our customers want to understand the biological meaning behind their data (as opposed to the meaning of data itself, there's a big difference), many have little understanding of statistics and sometimes very little computer experience. We provide something that is easy to use and provide the knowledge and understanding of what they are doing with their data. We don't sell to bioinformaticians (for the most part), we sell to bench scientists. In my company many of us are former bench scientists and we all have a good understanding of what they want. All of our programmers have life sciences degrees.
BTW, the term is "bioinformaticists", not "bioinformaticians"
Actually, it is you who is wrong. In the world of bioinformitics, "bioinformatician" is more widely used than "bioinformaticist". By the way, I work for a bioinformatics company.
The ambiguities this presents for a technical reader are unfortunate, especially if anyone studying bioinformatics is supposed to be computer science literate. The book itself assumes a life science literacy, so this isn't an unreasonable expectation of the reader.
In bioinformatics, science literacy is so much more important than computer literacy. Computer scientists rarely become good bioinfromaticians. This is the primary reason almost every single peice of commercial bioinformatics software is a complete peice of shit. And why the free stuff is hacky but gets the job done. The free stuff was written by life scientists, the commercial stuff was written by computer scientists with no domain knowledge of the question they were trying to answer.
Bioinformatics is not something you 'just get into.' And it is not a natural path to go from CS to bioinformatics.
6 articles were submitted in the last month, NONE were rejected. If there were any Rejected articles, they would be displayed under a "Recent Submissions" section.
Not true. You only see your own rejected submissions. Other people can only see your accepted submissions.
I swear I hit the reply button and was taken to the linux to windows migration page. Did that really happen? Now that would be about the only funny thing to happen on slashdot today.
Do other countries think it's funny to put [United States] in alphabetical order in a country drop down list instead of index 1 where it belongs no matter what?
I have a wife and two chilren. I get no respect. I get walked all over. My wife stays at home. She works hard at what she does. But obviously doesn't respect me or what I do because the moment I get home from the office. I have to take over her job.... So her hours are 8-5 while mine are 7-7...
So, you have to have sex with the mailman from 7 to 8am and then again for two hours when you get home?
I search google for mesothelioma about once a week (from various proxies) and click on an adwords ad just to screw some lawyer out of $40 (which is what a click on that keyword costs.)
When I was a kid, I lived in Vancouver, Washington (no state income tax.) I worked in Portland, Or (has state income tax, which I had to pay.) Nothing to see here, move along.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they were just waiting for linux to fully support it (as opposed to partially support it.)
The industry is too small to need to be regulated.
It's what you do while your Java program runs.
At all the companies I have worked at that use OSS have all taken something, improved it because they had a specific need for the improvement, then released the improvements. Our company is planning to do some optimizations to several OS statistical packages. However, the only reason we are going to do it, is because we need it to be faster.
As other people have pointed out, the internally developed stuff will most likely stay internal because it is poorly written/documented or would be to valuable to give away for free.
That said, if our company fails completely (ie not sold, just shuts its doors), I will advocate that the products be open sourced, because they very well could be.
One of the most useful things I have ever learned:
#perl -MCPAN -e shell
And it is not a natural path to go from CS to bioinformatics.
/.?
Then why are you on
Hmmm. Not sure. Beause the converse of my statement is surely: Bioinformatics people have no interest in programming, linux, etc. Actually, it's a little known fact that all bioinformatics is still done with pencil and paper (we can't even use calculators, the Patriot Act forbids it).
So...does your company produce crappy software or good software?
Most of our customers say good. The people who disagree do so mainly because it lacks a feature they want. Which is a huge problem with bioinformatics software - most do far too many things and none of them particularly well. A terrible side affect of this, is it makes them overly complex, often to the point of unusable by only a very experienced bioinformatitician or very savvy computer user. As the nature of certain types of experiments matures and becomes cheaper (microarrays for instance), the amount of analysis features you need actually lessens because you can design better experiments. Early software was complex because the experiments were very expensive and the inability to to replicates necessitated the need for complex statistical analysis. Our customers want to understand the biological meaning behind their data (as opposed to the meaning of data itself, there's a big difference), many have little understanding of statistics and sometimes very little computer experience. We provide something that is easy to use and provide the knowledge and understanding of what they are doing with their data. We don't sell to bioinformaticians (for the most part), we sell to bench scientists. In my company many of us are former bench scientists and we all have a good understanding of what they want. All of our programmers have life sciences degrees.
BTW, the term is "bioinformaticists", not "bioinformaticians"
Actually, it is you who is wrong. In the world of bioinformitics, "bioinformatician" is more widely used than "bioinformaticist". By the way, I work for a bioinformatics company.
The ambiguities this presents for a technical reader are unfortunate, especially if anyone studying bioinformatics is supposed to be computer science literate. The book itself assumes a life science literacy, so this isn't an unreasonable expectation of the reader.
In bioinformatics, science literacy is so much more important than computer literacy. Computer scientists rarely become good bioinfromaticians. This is the primary reason almost every single peice of commercial bioinformatics software is a complete peice of shit. And why the free stuff is hacky but gets the job done. The free stuff was written by life scientists, the commercial stuff was written by computer scientists with no domain knowledge of the question they were trying to answer.
Bioinformatics is not something you 'just get into.' And it is not a natural path to go from CS to bioinformatics.
Uh, genomics isn't going anywhere.
6 articles were submitted in the last month, NONE were rejected. If there were any Rejected articles, they would be displayed under a "Recent Submissions" section.
Not true. You only see your own rejected submissions. Other people can only see your accepted submissions.
But they might need to rephase the modulators and run in through some sort of tachion inverter feild.
as slashdot is today.
Coming this quick last year.
I swear I hit the reply button and was taken to the linux to windows migration page. Did that really happen? Now that would be about the only funny thing to happen on slashdot today.
Do other countries think it's funny to put [United States] in alphabetical order in a country drop down list instead of index 1 where it belongs no matter what?
Now if only someone would hack it into a photoshop do-alike.
I have a wife and two chilren. I get no respect. I get walked all over. My wife stays at home. She works hard at what she does. But obviously doesn't respect me or what I do because the moment I get home from the office. I have to take over her job.... So her hours are 8-5 while mine are 7-7...
So, you have to have sex with the mailman from 7 to 8am and then again for two hours when you get home?
I search google for mesothelioma about once a week (from various proxies) and click on an adwords ad just to screw some lawyer out of $40 (which is what a click on that keyword costs.)
This internet thing is just a fad.
*SIGH*
Borint non front page material!
What's next? Movie reviews?
When I was a kid, I lived in Vancouver, Washington (no state income tax.) I worked in Portland, Or (has state income tax, which I had to pay.) Nothing to see here, move along.
Free as in not free enough? Give me a break
Anybody know how the grammar checkers in alternative office suites are? Star Office, Open Office,
As far as I know, OpenOffice has no grammar checker. At least I can't find it.
That's unpossible!