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Indiana Law Journal

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2025

Publication Citation

100 Indiana Law Journal 1567

Abstract

For at least a quarter of a century, life science researchers around the world have undertaken initiatives loosely based on principles, goals, and institutional structures derived from the open source software (OSS) movement—approaches that I term “open source bio.” Yet open source bio lacks a clear definition and set of guiding principles. Given public calls for greater openness in life science research, it is useful to understand how open source bio projects have fared over the past quarter century: how they were structured, what they hoped to achieve, and, as social and policy experiments, whether or not they were successful. This Article analyzes twelve life science research projects that have claimed to operate on an open source basis. It distills the common structures, features, and goals of these heterogeneous projects and evaluates them in terms of three organizing principles of open source: (1) their provision of access to enabling technology, (2) their treatment of intellectual property (IP), and (3) their mode of technology development. It concludes with observations and recommendations regarding directions for future open source bio projects and the prospects for meaningful open source bio projects in the future.

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