Open Bioinformatics Foundation as Associated Project

[Josh Berkus]

SPI members:

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF)[1] is a currently incorporated
entity which hosts legal and financial infrastructure for a variety of
open source bioinformatics projects, including BioPerl, Biojava,
Biopython, Bioruby, and BioSQL.  They also host the annual Open
Bioinformatics Conference[2].

As the OBF is currently incorporated as a for-profit corporation, they
would like to become an SPI Assocaited project preparatory to shutting
down the for-profit corporation, and to reduce the amount of time their
volunteers spend doing corporate paperwork.

The OBF would like to join SPI as a single Associated Project.  Their
liaison would be chosen by an election substantially similar to their
current corporate bylaws for election of their president.[3]

As the OBF is a substantial open source project whose goals are in
alignment with the goals of SPI, I think it makes sense to accept them.
 In the event that this moves to a board agenda item, the OBF will
prepare liaison election procedures suitable for their Associated
membership.

[1] http://open-bio.org/
[2] http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2012
[3] http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/File:OBF-Bylaws.pdf