A Push for Open Source Biology from Merck Boss

I hope something good comes out of this effort. But from my previous experience with biological data & biological research, I'm a bit skeptical. There is so much competition for grants & publications that researchers are sometimes reluctant to truly share data & help others build on their work.

A commendable effort and idea. Thanks for posting here.

Genetic intellectual property will be an issue for years it seems. Economic pressures will hopefully force openness and innovation. Patent law needs to catch up in biology as much as it has been in software.

This is directly related to open sourcing your medical records really, since medical records of the future will necessarily contain oodles of genetic information.

There isn't too much on their main web page, however, the about page describes their objectives:

http://www.sagebase.org/about.html