About the OBF

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) is a non-profit, volunteer-run group that promotes open source software development and Open Science within the biological research community. Membership in the OBF is free and open to anyone who wants to help promote open source or open science in a biological field.

OBF runs the annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC).

BOSC 2026, the 27th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, took place July 14-15 in Washington, DC, as part of ISMB 2026. BOSC 2027 will be part of ISMB/ECCB 2027 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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Poster session at GCCBOSC2018

OBF Treasurer Heather Wiencko introducing OBF at BOSC 2024

OBF Event Awards

The OBF Event Fellowship program aims to increase diverse participation at events promoting open source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. There are two application rounds per year, in April and October.

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Ruth Nanjala, an OBF Event Award winner, by her poster

O|B|F Statement on Public Funding & Open Source

 Posted on January 1, 2002  |  dag

Preliminary Policy Statement on Public Funding and Open Source

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation believes that scientific software developed with public support should be distributed under terms analogous to those applied to biological materials. In common with treatment of reagents under the UBMTA and good practice, we believe that the essential source code necessary for reproducing published results should be made readily available for non-commercial research use.

While acknowledging that open source licenses may not be optimal in every instance, we believe that development and release of software under open source licenses is often beneficial and efficient in creating valuable scientific software, and in encouraging its widespread use and most successful exploitation.

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