>My understanding of *federal* regulations, however, is that the
>*government* is not allowed to compete against private industry.
Suppose BioTechNet, CompuServe and other private network news
industries make noises about BioSci/Bionet and the Internet
competing with them?
We need to pick the right analogies. Software companies will
liken this to rotor manufacturing by a government agency,
because they care about their bottom line and anything that
might compete with that. Take a look instead at the Internet,
or NFSnet, a goverment funded project. From CompuServe's point
of view, Internet is a direct, powerful competitor that may well
do them out of most or all of their business eventually.
Internet offers e-mail, news/discussion groups, file archives,
and various information services just like CompuServe.
But from the scientist's and other's point of view, Internet is
much more, and is able to reach a different audience. Internet
is like a national roadway or telephone service, something that
is very unlikely to get built thru many competing private ventures.
Important parts of Internet are for setting standards in
networks, just as a primary importance of NCBI is for bringing
standards to the molecular biology informatics field.
One reason it seems rather nasty for a group of software
companies to lobby congress apparently without public discussion
among the scientists/end users to be affected by these decisions
is that the private companies have *one* point of view, not
necessarily the best one for science and commerce. Commerce
includes consumers.
MACAW is an interesting piece of software from some scientists
at NCBI -- this is one of the few *new algorithms* which was
also brought into the world with a *usable, biologist-friendly
software interface*. A large portion of the software from
private companies is based on algorithms and primary software
code developed by scientists in academic or publicly funded
research. The privates put a usable interface on this, doll it
up with some other features, then sell for a profit. Is it
their complaint that NCBI has gone directly from algorithm to
usable software? I would hope that is the goal of all
scientist's algorithm building -- to make something *useable* by
fellow scientists.
If we don't have a directing agency for molbio information
technology, but do all this in private commercial modes, I think
it will turn into, or return to, a mess of incompatible
software, data formats, and analytical methods. NCBI is for
setting standards. They need to write software as well as format
and distribute data, in order to set those standards. Some of
this may compete with private software developers, but it is
necessary if we want organized, standard, usable biotechnology
information.
--
Don Gilbert gilbert at bio.indiana.edu
biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405
