The DIY biotech movement has been going on for some time now. People are drawing parallels between the movement and the early days of the tech scene, predicting DIY bio will be as big and influential as today's DIY tech scene.

While I want to be optimistic about that, the comment from Declan Soden in the article seems pretty spot on.

Putting together genes into plasmids and bacteria is just the beginning. The main goal is to endow some organisms with new useful traits. The problem is, testing the trait becomes increasingly difficult for DIY biologists because it is rarely as easy as putting the genes together. How do you test if your bacteria has made the desired anticancer compound? You need to chemically analyze your product, and ultimately you need to try it on people.

This is different compared to software. Open source software can become what it is today, because testing the software itself is relatively easy. Want to write a new browser? Just use it yourself. How about a new media player? Use it to play your videos and see how it goes.