Nature.com: Correspondence: Open-source work even more vital to genome project than to software

[ Thanks to Rob van Son for this link. ]

"We note with dismay and alarm the controversy concerning access, distribution and patenting of the human genome sequence (Nature 404, 317; 2000 & Nature 404, 324; 2000). We wish to point out some analogies between the human genome sequencing efforts and 'open-source' software development, which have implications for the data-release policy of the public sequencing effort."

"Since introduction of the open-source concept, a global network of volunteer programmers is developing and maintaining freely available, sophisticated software that can be modified and redistributed by anyone. The validity of the open-source model has been proved over decades. Its best known achievement is GNU-Linux, the fastest-growing operating system on the major hardware platforms, which is widely thought to be more powerful, stable and flexible than proprietary commercial products."

"The reasons why the Linux project could succeed against commercial wisdom have been analysed by Eric S. Raymond in his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O'Reilly, 1999). Most of these findings are of relevance to academic and commercial benefits arising from human genome sequencing."

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