Why this blog?

Me and Thomas were eating pizza some time ago and discussed a lot of contemporary trends that are shaping our society and create so many new opportunities. One of the main forces at work these days of course is the increasing connectivity between people all over the globe enabled by the internet. This feat is a real enabler for crowds all over the world and when organized in a correct way a lot can be achieved with the power of these crowds. The most well known example of course being the operating system Linux, an operating system developed by the masses and available for free to the masses. In other words it is a piece of open source software.

So what exactly is open source. According to wikipedia: Open source is an approach to design, development, and distribution offering practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

Or as opensource.org states it:Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Opensource.org, I believe, incorrectly includes the word 'software' in there definition. It is true that open source is strongly linked with software development as it is this field that the definition first came from. However, open source can exist in many different fields. For example medication development. Hopefully.

In my words open source is "an iterative development process applied on an initial piece of information that is used by many people at the same time. People take a free piece of existing information, modify it and subsequently redistribute it back to the community for free again, slowly improving the information."

While eating pizza and discussing open source we stumbled upon the topic of open source medicine development and wondered if this already existed and how it works. This blog is meant to explore an open source approach to medicine development. Does it exist? How is it applied? Could it be a method for finding cures for terrible diseases like Aids, Cancer, Malaria,....? How should it be organized? ............

We want to make this an open source discussion so feedback and contributions are always welcome. Just drop me a line marc.frencken@gmail.com