by: John H. Jones – LIMSforum.com Group Owner

Linkedin has become the largest interactive community for LIMS users & professionals and the two leading LIMS user groups on Linkedin are LIMS/LI (with over 4,000 members)  and the LIMSforum ( with nearly 40,000 members).  If you are a LIMS user or professional and are not yet a member of these groups you will want to visit these groups and check out the great discussions below.  Some of these discussions have nearly 100 comments by user members!

As we near the end of 2012, I thought it would be good to identify the most popular discussions posted so far in 2012.  I went through the group I run (LIMSforum) and selected the most popular discussions for this year and I asked Terry Iorns, the group owner of LIMS/LI, to do the same.  There is very little overlap in the discussions between the 2 groups so you will want to be sure and visit both groups.

The following table provides links to those popular discussions that Terry and I found in each of our groups.  These discussions are still open and we invite you to jump into those discussions or start your own.  The members in these groups are friendly and very helpful and welcome the chance to answer questions from end users.  Don’t be shy, all questions and comments are warmly welcomed.

Click on the discussion you are interested in to read the entire posting!

	Popular Discussions (lots of posted comments)
1	Will Cloud Computing do to licensed software companies what the internet did to magazines & newspapers?
2	The most comprehensive list of LIMS Vendors / Products in the industry
3	Does anyone use a Serial-to-Ethernet device to interface lab software to serial instruments?
4	Is a LIMS the platform of choice for the future “Integrated Lab”
5	In the environmental analytical contract lab industry, are value-added services becoming “the norm” and part of clients’ expectations?
6	Today, Excel is widely used for data capture/performing some basic data analysis tasks. Based on our study, we found below listed challenges ..Read More
7	When a vendor releases is new version of their software and the data model is fundamentally changed, should this be classified as an UPGRADE, MIGRATE or NEW SYSTEM? What is our experience and opinion?
8	Would you want to “Test Drive” lab informatics software before you buy it?
9	Does anybody know if it is possible to run LIMS in virtual machine VMware media?
10	What is the best LIMS for next-generation genomics/Sequencing samples?
11	How would you rate the quality of Open Source Software compared to commercial software
12	Combined Systems: LIMS/ELN
13	Has anyone integrated a LIMS and a Manufacturing Execution System (MES)?
14	What keeps you from getting a LIMS for your lab?
15	Lab Scheduling Software
16	It’s time to run Java out of town, are LIMS built on Java the next to go?
17	Is there any use or need for a Wiki in the laboratory?
18	Hi, did anyone use a LIMS for sequencing core facility? I am now testing Gnomex wich is open source and designed for highthrouput sequencing platform. That looks to give us satisfaction.
19	Amazon offers cloud apps at hourly rates from IBM, SAP, others – what about LIMS and ELN
20	Are there any good work group collaboration tools that can be an alternative to a LIMS?
21	Anyone know of a solid QBD (quality by design) program for small scale PD? Needs to be OPC
22	Which type of software license is of best value?
23	Does Open Source have some advantages when it comes to validation?
24	What is the most important trend for Lab Informatics Software?
25	Consumerization of IT, will this be a trend for Laboratory Informatics?
26	Suggestions for an inexpensive barebone LIMS
27	Does “Big Data” apply to Lab Informatics in ways other than Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)?
28	Hi Group, I was wondering if anyone has some advice or recommendations for a stand alone Blood Banking application.
29	What do you use for Data Mining, especially in drug discovery ?
30	Suggestions on how to migrate LIMS data from a legacy LIMS to a new LIMS
31	Is there a list of LIMS, ERP or SDMS solution that are based (or at least able to manage) chemical structures?
32	How do you use laboratory informatics tools / processes to support lean concepts in your lab? (14 comments posted in LIMSforum) How do you use laboratory informatics tools / processes to support lean concepts in your lab? (7 comments posted in LIMS/LI)
33	Are LIMS and LIS the same thing?
34	When defining your lab’s informatics requirements, what are the key points to cover?
35	NGS LIMS – Do you have any recommendations for NGS LIMS?
36	Is there much difference in chemstation and empower
37	The DiY LIMS… Does this Dilbert cartoon remind you of anything?
38	Web Browser based apps have been the trend for about 10 years now. What is next?
39	Switching from a paper lab notebook – help and suggestions needed.
40	Which direction will we see with lab informatics apps?
41	Do it Yourself (DiY) LIMS. Is it right for your lab? Are you a software developer or a lab?
42	LIMS final reports and the need to edit those reports
43	Anyone have any experience with good document management software to help with CAP/CLIA inspections? I’ve heard good things about Genial (Geneial) – anyone else?
44	I had some questions regarding LIMS pricing 1) Typically are user licenses & server renewed on an annual basis? I read through the 2012 buying guide and I wasn’t clear on this. Thanks!
45	Use of digital signatures on final reports
46	hi all , is it necessary to have our LIMS software validated by the FDA to sold and install it in the US ?
47	Is there a reason for a lack of innovation in the LIMS industry?
48	Are serial port based instruments still common in the lab?
49	If you had to pick one mobile device, which would you choose?
50	Will these tech trends have a positive affect on your lab?

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When it comes to desktop apps like Microsoft Office and Adobe apps in the “Cloud”, this is the image that comes to mind:

It’s like a fish out of water or in this case, a boat in the road.

The future of the Corporate Office Worker

Well, I know this is not a LIMS article but I just read an article that caused me to do a double take.  I know I am a bit out of touch with the smarmy corporate culture but my God, if this is the sort of stuff that is going on, I pray that the SPCA will come to the rescue of our fellow chickens (I mean office workers).

The article is in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Warming up to the Officeless Office”.  This reminds me of what has happened to the industrialization of chicken farming where you see thousands of chickens stuffed into a communal area.  The SPCA has attempted for years to come to the rescue of chickens, lets hope they can help out the poor Corporate office worker

Corporate-Friendly Open Source Licenses

I have been doing some research on the different types of Open Source licenses.  The following is a good posting that quickly summarizes the potential dangers of Open Source to corporations.  You just have to know the rules but as with all software, you need to live by the license agreement.  The funny thing is that GPL touts “freedom” but it is a rather restricted “freedom”.  it has all the ring of truth of the double speak/thought from the book 1984 by George Orwell.  Now I am all for Open Source in the corporate environment but you have to be careful, especially beware of AGPLv3.

What open source licenses are more corporate-friendly, i.e., they can be used in commercial products without the need to open source the commercial product?

I recommend the Apache License (specifically, version 2). It is not a “copy left” license and it addresses several matters that are important to established companies and their lawyers.

“Copy left” is the philosophy of the free software foundation requiring anything incorporating the licensed opens source code to also be licensed as open source. That philosophy is regarded as poison by established companies that want to keep their products proprietary.

Aside from not having “copy left” provisions, the Apache license specifically addresses the grant of rights from project contributors and it expressly addresses the fact that modern companies are typically made up for more than one legal entity (for example, a parent company and its subsidiaries). Most open source licenses don’t address these points.

Whatever license you choose, if you want your code to be “corporate friendly,” in the sense that you want it to be incorporated into commercial, non-open source products, it is essential that you avoid GPL and other “copy left” type licenses. While it would be best to consult with your own lawyer before investing time or money in a project for which this is an important factor, a quick shorthand for licenses that are and are not “copy left” can be found on the Free Software Foundation’s website. They identify which licenses they don’t find meet their standards as “copy left.” The ones FSF rejects are most likely the ones that will be corporate friendly in this sense.

(Although the question didn’t ask this, it is worth mentioning that, with very few exceptions, even GPL and other “copy left” type licenses are perfectly corporate friendly if they are only used internally by the commercial entities and not incorporated into their products.)

The above article is licensed as follows: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ and the source was provided by: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28530/corporate-friendly-open-source-licenses

Click here to read entire paper

Clouds are rapidly becoming an important platform for scientific applications. In this paper we describe our experiences running a scientific workflow application in the cloud.

The application was developed to process astronomy data released by the Kepler project, a NASA mission to search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. This workflow was deployed across multiple clouds using the Pegasus Workflow
Management System. The clouds used include several sites within the FutureGrid, NERSC’s Magellan cloud, and Amazon EC2.

We describe how the application was  deployed, evaluate its performance executing in different clouds (based on Nimbus, Eucalyptus, and EC2), and discuss the challenges of deploying and executing workflows in a cloud environment. We also demonstrate how Pegasus was able to support sky computing by executing a single workflow across multiple cloud infrastructures simultaneously.