On 2006-06-27, bio_enthusiast <la**********@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.
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