[OWW-Discuss] Tapping into open source / open access and doingslightly more

[Jason Morrison]

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?"
I'm curious what specific types of files you see going into the <centrifuge>
or <uncoli> projects.

Russell, you bring up a good point about the difference in initial capital
investment between software and wetware development.  Might a
http://techshop.ws/ 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)

Cheers,
Jason

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Russell Hanson <russell2 at qiezi.net> wrote:

> Yo Bryan,
>
> 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....
>
> peace,
> Russell
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
>
> Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 21:22:58
> To:discuss at openwetware.org <To%3Adiscuss at openwetware.org>
> Subject: Re: [OWW-Discuss] Tapping into open source / open access and doing
>        slightly more
>
>
> On Wednesday 14 May 2008, "John Cumbers" <johncumbers at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  I don't really understand what you are proposing and if you posted
> > an executive summary then it might prompt more of a discussion.
>
> It's a software architecture that lets us do what debian did for
> software -- aggregating tens of thousands of programmers -- but with
> other projects, on OWW it's science. Instead of a dry wiki, you have a
> wiki that is built on a file repository, with data files provided by
> whoever submits content, which can be immediately used in other
> projects. And then you get easy "apt-get install <centrifuge>"
> commands, or "apt-get install <uncoli>" etc. I am actually not too good
> at predicting what projects will show up on the map, but those are
> valid guesses.
>
> - Bryan
> ________________________________________
> http://heybryan.org/
>
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-- 
Jason Morrison
jason.p.morrison at gmail.com
http://jayunit.net
(585) 216-5657
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