[clug] CLUG meeting 22 July 2004

[Stephen Rothwell]

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 11:29:06 +1000 David Price <david.price at anu.edu.au> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 19, 2004 at 10:54:38AM +1000, Steven Hanley wrote:
> > Currently there are no talks scheduled, any volunteers?
> 
> James Robertson should still be talking.  I mentioned this previously,
> but it was a fair while ago.  Details are repeated below.  Michael
> Lucas-Smith may also be talking about some software he's been writing
> recently.

Richard Jefferson (<R.Jefferson at cambia.org>) also asked if he could come
and talk about some stuff that his group is involved with at the moment.
Could someone write to him to see if he still wants tom talk?  (I am on
Ottawa at the moment).

I responded that I though some of you may be interested ...

--------------------quote--------------------------------------------
A couple of the people I work with here at CAMBIA would like to come to
the next CLUG meeting to talk about our  major new project called BIOS
(Biological Innovation for Open Society  or BIological Open Source  -
for more info see quoted text at bottom).    
 
I've already talked  to Tridge & Hugh Blemings at the IBM Ozlabs  about
some of our ideas and challenges, and they suggested we come along to a
CLUG meeting. 

We are keen to get input from  the OS/Linux community on how to solve
or at least approach  some of the more challenging (software
development) aspects of this venture.   As well, we are trolling for
highly talented software architects and coders to help.
 
These software challenges fall into into two broad categories,  
 
a)     development of an  OS  sourceforge-like hosted web application to
allow researchers to initiate, collaborate , manage and  d eliver
biological "solutions" (Bioforge)  to major challenges worldwide, such
as nutrition and public health crises, and to secure them  in a
'Protected Commons' that is evocative of GPL or BSD licensing (or a
hybrid).   
 
 and  
 
b)     the development of sophisticated OS informatics and parsing tools
to overcome many of the  Intellectual Property  challenges (such as the
volume and complexity of patents) that are currently obstacles to the
creation and delivery of biological solutions  by 'normal' folks (not
just multinationals) .    
 
Would it be possible for us to have a short slot of time to table some
of these issues?   This is a pretty exciting new initiative, and seems
to be gathering worldwide support, but its being built from a Canberra
base - so the CLUG  could be a key to porting the lessons learned from
the FS/OS community to serious issues of food and health.

-------------------unquote-------------------------------------------
-- 
Cheers,
Stephen Rothwell                    sfr at canb.auug.org.au
http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sfr/
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