@gaudi and I have started a biweekly hangout on Tuesdays at 3pm UTC on Jitsi. Come drop by to talk about open-source microfluidics/digital biology. Times are listed on the GOSH community calendar
Here’s a link to a google doc with notes from previous meetings.
Just a reminder that today’s Digital Biology hangout is one hour later than usual (@4pm UTC | Find your local time). We will be joined by our friend and special guest, Greg Austic (@gbathree) (Our-Sci and GOSH co-founder). He is going to share with us his experience in helping found the Open AgStack initiative under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.
We were joined by our friend and special guest, Greg Austic (Our-Sci and GOSH co-founder). He shared with us his experience with the Open AgStack initiative (which operates under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation).
Linux Foundation is organizational and legal umbrella for collaborative projects/initiative
Standard agreements for contributing funds and governance
Support: Staff Lawyers, License experts
Name recognition, credibility
Network of open-source projects, organizations: ~200 projects (Linux, Hyperledger, communication standards)
E.g., 20 companies that are competing with each other and find a common project or standard to support (everyone chips in $10k into a shared pot for development)
Linux Foundation is supportive of helping new communities to organize
Downsides:
Easiest way is to just use their legal structures
E.g., Everyone chip in money to fund shared development
If you want to do something more complicated (e.g., introduce diversity requirements, alternative business models, etc.), they may not be against it, but they may not be able to offer much support
No copyleft license (e.g., GPL), only permissive licenses (didn’t work for Our-sci projects that had already been developing under GPL)
AgStack building a new historical weather service and developing this under permissive licenses
After you raise funds, how do you distribute resources?
They have standard governance structures that you can use
Try to keep governing board separate from those who are implementing (not bias to specific technologies)
What are the minimum requirements for organizations that want to join?
AgStack has 3 levels: 5, 10, +
Different membership levels provide different benefits, governing board
Does it make sense that only the companies that pay get to make decisions?
No fee but you have to be accepted
Legal support for working with existing standard contracts, not sure if they would be able to support alternative contracts, models
Question from Greg: what areas do you see as a good fit for this type of collaboration in this community?
Interest in common software, data formats (e.g., for DMF device representation)
How does AgStack handle different types of actors in the community (e.g., companies, individuals, academic labs)
AgStack has an academic level
Off-the-shelf governance structure may not be a fit the community, may need to customize
Are there other organizations that we should also consider? E.g., Mozilla, Apache foundation? Maybe ask @jcm80 others in the GOSH community?
How complicated is the software?
Could become very complicated (e.g., similar complexity to JVM if we were to implement all of the “features” described in the literature)
Opportunity for sharing methodologies, protocols
Hardware is commodity (e.g., raspberry pi, MCUs, etc.) but chip is disposable and delicate
Next steps:
Get Greg to introduce us to contact at Linux Foundation so what we can discuss how/whether or not our community would be a good fit (e.g., Is this the right model? Is it the right time? Is there a path to getting us there?)
Ask others in the community if there are other orgs we should maybe consider as alternatives (e.g., Mozilla, Apache)
Setup more technical, software focused meetings every 2 weeks (on the alternate weeks to the general Digital Biology hangout)
Today hangout with Yogesh from ssg-cic.org small non-profit start up interested to run vocational training courses/progams in low income/low resource countries/settings.