Questions about OSS projects.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2006-06-27, bio_enthusiast <lancepickens at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was wondering how to go about starting an open source
> project for doing routine biological problems?

Generally you either start writing code to fulfill a need of
yours, or you pay somebody else to write it for you.

> There is a plethora of scripts and a fairly large biopython
> project to back up anyone who tried, these however cater to
> the bioinformatics community and it loses the vast majority of
> the wet-lab scientists. How can someone who is used to writing
> small scripts and doing wet-lab work contribute to the open
> source community?

For existing projects, you can help a lot by submitting good
bug reports, documentation enhancements or translations,
patches, etc.

> Starting software projects seems to be the domain of people
> with much more experience and skill but there are some serious
> needs by people who do not have the skills to upkeep any
> software based project.

That's what money is for.  People with no need for (or interest
in) program X (and indeed don't even know about the need)
aren't going to write program X unless you pay them to.  You
could try to recruit some SW types to write the code for free,
but they're probably already busy working on OSS projects that
they need/want. 

There are sites where you can offer "bounties" as incentives
for people to work on the OSS you want them to work on.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Are you still
                                  at               SEXUALLY ACTIVE? Did you
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