Data Sharing Goes Linux

A life-science information platform joins the nonprofit organization that helped develop the open-source operating system.

Written byBob Grant

| 1 min read

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WIKIMEDIA, W.REBELThe Biological Expression Language (BEL) may be on the road to becoming a ubiquitous mode of communication among life scientists. OpenBEL, the open-source software project that seeks to transform life science data into something akin to HTML coding language, has partnered with The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit technology consortium that promotes the growth and development of the open-source operating system Linux.

The marriage should provide a boost to OpenBEL, which is already used by many in industry and academia to enable better collaboration on big data projects, such as drug development. The hope is that the nonprofit can do for OpenBEL what it is doing for Linux, which has become lingua franca among collaborative software developers and hackers alike.

“All of us are smarter collectively than any one of us is by ourselves, and Linux is one of the greatest examples of that principle,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation, in a statement. “OpenBEL represents an amazing opportunity for openness and collaboration to advance science, and we’re happy to impart our knowledge of collaborative software development to leaders in the life sciences industry.”

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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