Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
produced by NGS. In order to fi nd an answer they reached out to the
world by offering a $15 000 prize to the best new algorithm. All
algorithms had to be submitted via the sourceforge website, and under
the BSD2 licence. The BSD2 licence was deliberately chosen by Pistoia as
it has minimal requirements about how the software can be used and
re-distributed - there are no requirements on users to share back any
modifi cations (although, obviously, it would be nice if they did). This
should lower the legal barriers within companies to adopting the software,
and is a great example of industry embracing open source standards to
help drive innovation. The challenge was open to anyone and entries
were ranked on various statistics concerning data compression and
performance. A detailed breakdown of the results of the challenge is
available from [13].
In conclusion, it is clear that free and open source software is not really
'cost-free' in an industrial setting. It is also true that there can be issues
that make deployment diffi cult, particularly where sensitive data are
concerned. However, by developing new models for hosting and
supporting such software we could be witnessing a new direction for the
use of free and open source software in commercial environments.
22.8 References
[1]
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/05/fi refox_at_270.html
[2]
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125949.htm
[3]
http://www.dnalc.org/view/15073-Completion-of-a-draft-of-the-human-
genome-Bill-Clinton.html
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing
[6] The 1000 Genomes Project Consortium, A map of human genome variation
from population-scale sequencing.
Nature
2010;467:1061-73.
[7] Barnes, MR et al. Lowering industry fi rewalls: pre-competitive informatics
initiatives in drug discovery.
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
2009;8:701-8.
[8]
http://www.pistoiaalliance.org
[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpamAssassin
[10]
http://www.OSS-watch.ac.uk
[11] Wilbanks, J.
Intellectual Property Aspects Of Collaboration in Collaborative
Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research
(Ekins S, Hupcey
MAZ, Williams AJ eds.) Wiley (London) ISBN0470638036
[12]
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page
[13]
http://www.sequencesqueeze.org/
