TheOpen Bioinformatics Foundation is anon-profit, volunteer-run organization focused on supportingopen source programming inbioinformatics.[1] The mission of the foundation is to support the development of open source toolkits for bioinformatics, organise developer-centrichackathon events and generally assist in the development and promotion of open source software development in the life sciences. The foundation also organises and runs the annualBioinformatics Open Source Conference, a satellite meeting of theIntelligent Systems for Molecular Biology conference.[2] The foundation participates in theGoogle Summer of Code, acting as an umbrella organisation for individual bioinformatics-related projects.[3][4]
The Open Bioinformatics Foundation was started in 2001, arising from theBioJava,BioPerl andBioPython projects. A formal membership for the foundation was created in 2005.[1] In October 2012, the foundation began an association withSoftware in the Public Interest (SPI), a US-based non-profit which aids other organizations in the creation and distribution offree andopen-source software. The association with SPI allows financial donations to the foundation (these are 501(c)3 tax-exempt in the US).[1][5]
The foundation is governed by a board of directors, representing various Bio* projects. As of 2019, the OBF President is Peter Cock (BioPython).[6] Previous OBF presidents includeEwan Birney and Hilmar Lapp (NESCent), previous Board members includeSteven E. Brenner.[7]
The foundation hosts servers for mailing lists, websites, and code repositories for a number of bioinformatics-related open source projects, including:[8]