Entering edit mode
6.1 years ago
As the bioinformatic market looks to grow, is open source software holding the market back by restricting the growth of smaller companies? Does it limit the amount of companies able to survive in the market therefore narrowing the commercial market or is it advantageous in that it allows more software to be available and more variations of software applications and tools? Interested to know when looking to the future of the market
The correct answers, in order:
Short answer is if you have a good product that you stand behind (and the product itself stands out) then you have a chance of surviving (either long term or until a bigger company buys you out, which is what many hope).
This question has been around since the dawn of bioinformatics. Similar things have happened with regular molecular biology workflows, microarray analysis software and now NGS. Irrespective of what happens in open source area, there will always be a market for commercial software (for support, longevity, control or regulatory reasons). Do market forces limit number of small companies that can form/survive, perhaps. But that is how things work.
Hello Bioinformatician90!
We believe that this post does not fit the main topic of this site.
Not a bioinformatics question
For this reason we have closed your question. This allows us to keep the site focused on the topics that the community can help with.
If you disagree please tell us why in a reply below, we'll be happy to talk about it.
Cheers!
I believe this is a relevant question given it is a Bioinformatic forum and my question is looking to discuss the Bioinformatic market and how smaller companies are effected by free software. I would like to understand why it doesn't fit the criteria or topic of the site?
This is an open ended and opinionated discussions (similar to questions on "your favorite programming language", "best OS" etc. ), Biostars should focus on questions that can be answered. Open ended discussions could eventually go under Forum, but your initial post did not contain any mention of Bioinformatics in the question text. In addition "market" questions are not primarily bioinformatics questions but questions of economical forecasting in my opinion (which again imo makes them not even scientific questions in the strict sense ;).
See for example https://www.quora.com/Where-are-the-differences-between-open-source-versus-closed-source https://www.quora.com/Does-open-source-really-work
If you wish to generate a good discussion I can re-open the topic under the Forum post type, but I would like to have a less divisive title "good or bad for the market" to make the question more relevant (note: the majority of bioinformatics software is as of today open source, whether this is good or bad for a prospective market does not have influence on the fact). Please edit the title and let us know what you think.