On the middle ground between open source and commercial software - the case of the Newbler program

摘要

Earlier this year, I started a petition (http://flxlexbl wordpress.com/2014/01/31/make-newbler-open-sourc to ask Roche Applied Science to make the source co of their Newbler software (GS De Novo Assembler, Reference Mapper and GS Amplicon Variant Analyz open source. In this column, I want to explain my m tivation, describe my interactions with Roche, and pla this petition in the wider perspective of closed- vers open-source software.