Bikanero Blogs

Honestly, why should Open Source LIMS be better?

27 November 2023, Lemoene Smit, Cape Town

Not all Open Source LIMS are equal. Consider a well functioning project with

Mature code

Dynamic user community

Professional developers

Fee paying clients

The Elusive 3 month LIMS Implementation

2 June 2022, Lemoene Smit, Cape Town

In an optimum scenario, it will be possible to implement Bika LIMS in three months, from start-up to going live with trained and confident users. Just that such an environment hardly exists

A cheerful little LIMS website by Bika Lab Systems

13 December 2021, Lemoene Smit, Cape Town

The End for Open Source evangelism

Do you remember the skirmishes with narrow sighted closed source promoters of the 2000s? And how easily they were concluded from the efficient Open Source high ground... It has been quiet for a while now and sampling a few recent surveys, preaching Open Source does not seem necessary anymore
Lemoene, 14 April 2021, Cape Town

At long last, training videos

All good

The Year that was

Awesome
15 July 2018, Lemoene Smit, Cape Town

May day. Not Mayday. All well

Open Source LIMS full steam ahead
1 May 2018, Lemoene Smit, Cape Town, where the drought was broken

What's in a name?

Bika Lab Systems Pty Ltd and the Bika LIMSs
Lemoene, 4 January 2018

Someone told me nothing happened today

Pretty pictures made. Thank you Lu, http://postoasties.co.za/

Occupy Wall Street!

Mark Shuttleworth, Linux' Elon Musk, is preparing Canonical for an IPO and that is why Unity phone and desktop convergence was dropped earlier. Unity lives on as community project with Shuttleworth support. Lemoene, 17 May 2017

Cannot afford LIMS? Join forces

In a blog post* considering options for a group of small pharma laboratories finding LIMS unaffordable, the author concludes that they should collaborate on requirements gathering and system evaluation, and then try for a group deal from their selected vendor.

Too much of a proposal, my FOSS recommendation was not published. Paraphrased. Lemoene, 10 Feb 2017

Any commendable lab blogs?

Recent misleading How-is-Open-Source-possibly-Free Csol blog post invites discussion but do not publish any. There are not many good independent lab blogs covering day to day lab subjects sans overt marketing, and hardly any on lab automation. Lemoene, 15 November 2016

Libre Liberia

Back from a post Ebola systems building activities, I could not miss the FOSS resonance in Liberia's coat of arms?

The Love of Liberty brought us here!
Lemoene, 1 November 2016

The Belchertown Piper
Open Source vs. Free.

I am working with a group of developers who have built a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) based on the Open Source principle.

I spent a lot of time researching the availability of inexpensive, flexible LIMS that we might deploy as part of the project in Liberia. There were about 30 variants of Open Source LIMS and about half that many commercial versions including some SAAS. Richard Rabe, 15 December 2016

Open Source wheelchair and robohand

Quite amazing. Please contribute.
Lemoene, 11 November 2016

Free LIMS – An Oxymoron? Really

Re CSol blog post, 'Free LIMS an Oxymoron'. Uninformed, and very old misconception, but one we struggle with every day as users 'mistake themselves for paying clients'. Lemoene, 19 July 2016

Open Source expectation and misconception observations. Advice

Pick of from the Bika boards, thanks Jean, Reddit. Lemoene, 15 February 2016

1st OpenLabConnect release. Open Source Instrument middle ware

A team of coders in Vietnam, led by Huy Doan, in association with the OpenElis community and sponsored by APHL, put out a first version of their Open Source Instrument Interface server, OpenLabConnect, for evaluation. Lemoene, 19 July 2016

Kaapse Fisant, Cape Spurfowl née Francolin Pternistis Capensis

Related to jungle bush quail and rock partridge, spurfowl were long mistook to be a peasant subfamily. Reclassified Pterinistis, they restrict themselves to Africa, thrive, and near all prevail safe on threatened species lists. Capensis is endemic to the South Western Cape, Mzansi. Lemoene, 10 December 2016

LinkedIn LIMS Circus

Social media hype not withstanding, useful shared information can be found and contributed to on otherwise business driven LinkedIn's lab related groups, speed reading with hot air detectors on. Accreditation and QC related groups, where there is less proprietary ownership, seem to carry more information rich posts. LIMS specific groups suffer from sterile political correctness and, much more so, vested proprietary group ownership that inhibits freedom of expression.

With the LIMS Circus group we aim to be both informative, entertaining and provocative, towards the witty standard set by Slashdot Science. Please join up and drop your pennies!