Bioinformatics is a true blend of computer science, software engineering and biology. The complexity of the information is such that there are few "off the shelf" solutions to bioinformatics problems; many problems have to be solved in place with people who understand as much of the system as possible. Only being able to understand the entire system can one tweak the code giving the correct one-off solution to the problem at hand.

Given such an emphasis on tailored solutions, it is not surprising that open source libraries have a massive impact on bioinformatics. These libraries range from the NCBI toolkit (home of the workhorse of bioinformatics, BLAST) through the scripting language projects like BioPerl to advanced projects such as BioLisp and hidden Markov model libraries. The open nature of this software development is perfectly aligned with openness in science and data release in genomics.

Ewan Birney shows how open source development has had an impact from the bench scientist to genome data management. He’ll describe how the open source movement in bioinformatics has matured from a group of twenty-somethings rescuing a 486 from a dumpster to be our server through to a non-profit organization marshalling over 200 active developers worldwide.