Free open source bioinformatics projects

Supporters of free open source Bioinformatics software largely attribute the explosion of successful bioinformatics applications and research projects in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, to the open sharing between research groups of the algorithms and methods used to make new observations from biological data. The early tradition of disclosing algorithms and even code may have stemmed from adherence to the principals of the scientific method which requires an explanation of the methods used to achieve a novel observation so that a reasonably skilled peer might repeat the procedure. This sharing allowed each new discovery to be more quickly built upon what the others had done. The combination of a continued need for new analysis algorithms for emerging types of biological readouts, the potential for innovative in silico experiments, and freely available open code bases all helped to create opportunities and remove barriers for both well-funded and under-funded groups to participate in research activities relevant to the general biology community. In fact open-source supporters encourage bioinformatics developers and researchers to contribute to growing open source collections in order to accelerate the pace of bioinformatics-based discoveries and to create opportunities for scientists in countries with fledgling knowledge economies.

Modern bioinformatics tools fall into every imaginable category of software, from proprietary algorithm implementations, to multi-million-dollar commercial enterprise applications, to public domain scripts. However, the free open source projects remain of great importance. They often act as idea incubators or community-supported layers in commercial applications, or provide de facto standards and shared object models for assisting with the present-and-growing challenge of bioinformation integration.

In order to maintain this tradition and also create opportunities the non-profit Open Bioinformatics Foundation have supported the annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) since 2000.