Bryan, the projects you propose a collection of - are they descriptions/data, like a lab protocol description? If this is the case, I think there's a huge space for the systemization and distributed production/annotation of these. I'd love to have well-tagged protocols that other software can say "hey, where's a protocol for performing abc on substrate uvw in conditions xyz?"<div>
<br></div><div>I'm curious what specific types of files you see going into the <centrifuge> or <uncoli> projects.</div><div><br></div><div>Russell, you bring up a good point about the difference in initial capital investment between software and wetware development. Might a <a href="http://techshop.ws/">http://techshop.ws/</a> for biology be a game changer here? Specifically: would there be enough interested individuals if the capital investment were the same? Let's say $3/day instead of $150/day to do mol bio. (That's assuming a $100/mo membership to TechLab, perhaps a high number. $150/day from est. $75k to bootstrap a mol bio lab plus a year of consumables. Compare to a $1000 development box, which brings us back to $3/day for the first year in the software realm)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Jason <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Russell Hanson <<a href="mailto:russell2@qiezi.net">russell2@qiezi.net</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Yo Bryan,<br>
<br>
I don't know of any situation where this config/build scenario would apply to any domain of molecular biology or molecular engineering. One of my conclusions after trying to teach molecular biophysics, etc. to people well versed in Linux, etc. was that both the level of education needed and the money to buy the chemicals and equipment used in the lab have an "appropriately" high barrier. Obviously people have had high-powered PCs in their homes since they were kids and you can pick up another for a few hundred bucks: not the case for molecular biology/chemical engineering. The people who are in the position to contribute the most in terms of research projects are precisely the people who already have so much going on they don't contribute to open-source software type projects. There are not tens of thousands of people out there looking for new "open and wet" projects, and there isn't the money available from the 'funding agencies' to support or supply those "open and wet" projects. I think the money and educational barriers trump the sociological engineering reasons for this. However, this is different from the self-fab and reprap-type stuff....<br>
<br>
peace,<br>
<font color="#888888">Russell<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Bryan Bishop <<a href="mailto:kanzure@gmail.com">kanzure@gmail.com</a>><br>
<br>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 21:22:58<br>
<a href="mailto:To%3Adiscuss@openwetware.org">To:discuss@openwetware.org</a><br>
Subject: Re: [OWW-Discuss] Tapping into open source / open access and doing<br>
slightly more<br>
<br>
<br>
On Wednesday 14 May 2008, "John Cumbers" <<a href="mailto:johncumbers@gmail.com">johncumbers@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> I don't really understand what you are proposing and if you posted<br>
> an executive summary then it might prompt more of a discussion.<br>
<br>
It's a software architecture that lets us do what debian did for<br>
software -- aggregating tens of thousands of programmers -- but with<br>
other projects, on OWW it's science. Instead of a dry wiki, you have a<br>
wiki that is built on a file repository, with data files provided by<br>
whoever submits content, which can be immediately used in other<br>
projects. And then you get easy "apt-get install <centrifuge>"<br>
commands, or "apt-get install <uncoli>" etc. I am actually not too good<br>
at predicting what projects will show up on the map, but those are<br>
valid guesses.<br>
<br>
- Bryan<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Jason Morrison<br><a href="mailto:jason.p.morrison@gmail.com">jason.p.morrison@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://jayunit.net">http://jayunit.net</a><br>(585) 216-5657
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