[GenABEL-dev] The GenABEL project fundamentals: post #2

[Yurii Aulchenko]

Here is post # 2 about 'fundamentals'.

best wishes,
Yurii

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The GenABEL project: open source methodology

"The future is open source everything" (Linus Torvalds)

Open source development is commons-based peer production by openly
exchanging ideas and collaboration. The GenABEL project provides
infrastructure to apply open source philosophy to methodology
development in statistical genomics, aiming to public good. To my
knowledge, application of the open source ideas to methodology
development is quite new.

In my view, ideally, the GenABEL project should operate on principles
of open source and open standards throughout: for governance,
methodology discussion, software implementation, extension,
maintenance, documentation, publication, education, training, etc.

My view is also that in the GenABEL project open principles are
critical for governance and software development/maintenance; in other
aspects this is up to an individual contributor to decide how far
he/she wants to go.

Open governance of the GenABEL project is a very important topic,
which will be discussed in a separate post. Here, I address open
principles in application to methodology, software development,
documentation, etc.

It is important that methodology is developed through open discussion,
and in my experience, bringing your idea to discussion at an early
stage saves time and improves quality. My suggestion is, if you got
what seems to be a bright methodological idea, just shoot it to the
genabel-development mailing list for discussion with other people.