[Bioperl-l] Re: [Biojava-l] The open bioinformatics foundation.

[Matthew Pocock]

Hi.

Ewan Birney wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Johann Visagie wrote:
>
> [apologies for the cross posting]
>
> > I also agree about BOSC - the amount of co-operatoin between the Bio*
> > projects was astounding!  Which - coupled with the example of Jason's
> > cross-posting - brings me to the point:

I was amazed by the degree of solidarity amung the BOSC atendees. I am realy
encouraged that there is good will out there both within and between the Bio*
projects.

>
> >
> > Shouldn't there be a general mailing list (moderated?) to cover issues that
> > pertain to all the Bio* projects?  ("biostar"? "openbio"?)  This could cover:
> > - announcements of interest to all, like Jason's
> > - co-operation / code sharing between projects
> > - etc.
> >
> > (Maybe the bioinformatics.org people can be prevailed upon to host it, since
> > they have such a nice domain? :-)
>
> Hmmmm. I had hoped to be able to announce this once this was all tied
> down, but I guess sometimes people think ahead of you... ;)
>
> Due to the amount of money that we have to process through BOSC and the
> existance corporate sponsors the whole thing, we are going to have
> something like
>
> "The Open Bioinformatics Foundation"
>
> <snip>

> We have a domain name for this, which is open-bio.org, which has the
> additional benefit that it can grow beyond bioinformatics if need be.
>

I think that this is a realy good idea. Things like funding & conferences are a
pain to handle alone, and some form of central admin would realy spread the load.
Also, it gives a realy clear focus to people who are interested in the whole
community rather than specificaly in an individual project.

> Re: central "coordinating" mailing list
>
> I think the current approach of crossing posting when something "generic"
> comes up is the best way.
>
> A central coordinating mailing list suggests, in my view, either
>
>         a) a highly controlling centralised structure, with the "in-crowd"
> make broad sweeping decisions. Bad.
>
>         b) a minor mailing list that noone subscribes to because there is
> only one post per month and that is "what does this list do?"
>

I think that it would be quite cool to have two 'central' mailing lists. I am
totaly commited to having project-specific mailing lists for all things that
pertain to one project only, and think that it is apropreate for people to
subscribe to more than one of these (I'm a lurker on the bioperl list, and am about
to subsribe to xml & corba).

1) a bio* announcements lists - to tell all the bio* people about something like
BOSC, or that a brand-new project like apollo is about to start, or to discuss
something that realy does pertain to everybody.

2) a spam list for companies who want to mail us all with products/jobs - we can
get them to mail our spam list and then opt in/out of it ourselves and if/when
somebody spams one of the real lists, we can tell them off and still give them
somewhere to post. The geek-finder site on www.userfriendly.org seems to work quite
well for them.

I would be tempted to subscibe everybody to the central mailing list if they
subscribe to any one of the bio* lists and make the spam list opt-in only.

>
> Currently I think that all the bio projects leaders, being myself -
> bioperl, matt - biojava, jeff (andrew) - biopython, brad (bioxml) and
> jason (biocorba) I think are subscribed to the other lists. In
> addition there are a large number of peole who are cross subscribed. This
> means that at least this group of people keeps in touch with each of the
> projects, knowing where each of the projects are.
>
> It terms of software coordination of the projects, these should be focused
> through bioxml/biocorba which is the right place for this.
>
> I don't want to sound negative about coordination, but I don't want
> "coordination" to become a way of having a strong top-down approach to the
> bio projects.
>
> Of course, a single mailing list would prevent me fro getting 5 copies of
> this mail, but then again, would this mail reach all the people it should
> do.
>
> If you think a single mailing list is a good idea, argue me into it ;)
>
> ewan
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Ewan Birney. Mobile: +44 (0)7970 151230, Work: +44 1223 494420
> <birney@ebi.ac.uk>.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>
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