The Linux Foundation ventures in a new direction

The Linux Foundation (LF) is well-known for its support of Linux (obviously), but over the last few years it has also taken on the role of a shepherd for other open source efforts. One of the earliest examples was the now moribund Nokia-Intel collaboration on the MeeGo mobile operating system. Others, such as Yocto, OpenMAMA, OpenDaylight, Tizen, and Xen all seem to be chugging along at some level, while CodeAurora Forum and FOSSBazaar seem rather quiet. All of those projects, though, have a fairly strong connection to Linux and open source software, but the same cannot be said for the most recent LF collaborative project: OpenBEL.

The "BEL" in the project's name is for Biological Expression Language, which gives an idea how far from open source software the LF has ventured. BEL is a data format used by life sciences researchers to encapsulate their research findings in a form that can be used by programs. It can represent the relationships between various biological entities as discovered in experiments. Importantly, BEL can store these relationships in context, where that might include the experimental regimen, research cited, and other important characteristics of those experiments.

In some ways, BEL is similar to the ideas behind the semantic web and other structured knowledge efforts. It is meant to structure information in a way that allows computers to "reason" about it, potentially finding correlations or other kinds of relationships that are present in the data, but difficult for a human to uncover. The OpenBEL web site notes a number of areas where BEL-encoded information could be useful: "network visualization of neural brain function; understanding of complex inter-related disease biology; comparison of human diseases with various animal models; deep investigation of drug efficacy and toxicity; as well as development of innovative therapeutics and diagnostics for personalized healthcare".

The OpenBEL project came about in April 2012, but BEL itself was opened up by Selventa (formerly known as Genstruct) in 2011. Beyond the BEL language, Selventa also open sourced several tools to visualize and curate BEL "knowledge graphs". At the end of August, the LF announced that OpenBEL had become one of its collaborative projects.

Essentially, the LF is using its knowledge of open source to assist the project in "converting" to an open source mindset. That mindset includes governance and infrastructure for projects that are targeted at collaboration between competitors, which are things that the LF has a fair amount of experience in. But biological research (and "knowledge engineering") are far afield from open source operating systems and other fairly closely related projects. Branching out to a project like OpenBEL is an effort to take the ideas of open source and apply them more widely. It evinces a similar goal to that of Red Hat's opensource.com.

The OpenBEL members page only lists Selventa and Foundation Medicine currently, but that may well be part of why the project is now with the LF. By providing a neutral ground for collaboration, the LF may seem less threatening for Selventa competitors that might be interested in the project. In addition, the LF has a fair amount of credibility in bringing competitors together to work on something in all of their interests—successfully—while they still compete in lots of other areas. One look at the LF members page will show rival silicon and hardware vendors, distributions, car companies, software vendors, and so on.

There are some clear advantages for the OpenBEL project, but it's also worth asking what the LF gets from taking on the project. Certainly the ability to further push the "open source paradigm" in new directions has some attraction. One would guess there is some money involved as well. Beyond that, though, the LF has set itself up to be able to quickly and easily serve these new communities. Knowledge about open source, its governance and management, along with the infrastructure to support this kind of collaboration are all present in the organization. Cranking out another collaborative project may almost be "old hat" at this point.

That's probably overstating things a bit, but it is clear that the LF is presenting itself as the "collaboration organization". There is, perhaps, a risk that it will spread itself too thinly, but there don't seem to be any real indications of that, at least yet. Some of the crop of collaborative projects have either withered away or may be on their way to doing so, which might pose a kind of credibility issue at some point. It may behoove the organization to be a little pickier in the future. But, overall, OpenBEL is an interesting foray for an organization that has previously stuck pretty close to home. It will be worth watching to see where things go from here.