thought Pawel in particular might like this - Bill Hooker

very interesting indeed :) - Jean-Claude Bradley

does anyone know who is behind this ? - Pedro Beltrao

I got there from Garrett Lisi's pages so either it's his baby or he knows whose it is. - Bill Hooker

well here's mine I would like to explore the possibility of funding for the UsefulChem project. Started in 2005, the aim of UsefulChem has been to carry out unambiguously useful work in chemistry in as transparent a manner as possible. The project currently has a strong focus on the synthesis of anti-malarial agents and supports a collaboration between Indiana University (Guha, docking), Drexel University (Bradley, synthesis) and UCSF (Rosenthal, testing). Seeking to enable rapid infrastructure duplication by other scientists, UsefulChem is built using almost exclusively free and hosted tools such as blogs, wikis, mailing lists, GoogleDocs and ChemSpider. For an example of duplication, see the Rosania lab. - Jean-Claude Bradley

part 2 Seeking to distinguish this approach from other less transparent Open Science initiatives, I have termed it "Open Notebook Science". It is an apt term since the driving force of the project is the publication of the laboratory's notebook onto a public wiki in as close to real time as possible. This provides an opportunity for anyone to participate. In fact one of the advantages of the approach is that it allows for a closer interaction between granter and grantee. - Jean-Claude Bradley

I'll let you know if anything comes of it - thanks for the tip Bill! - Jean-Claude Bradley

*slaps own forehead* Don't know why I didn't think of UsefulChem. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you! - Bill Hooker

Thanks Bill! I do like it :) - Pawel Szczesny

I'd be interested to hear how it goes. And how much money the might have available. Could do lot of things if I could get my salary paid for two years. Actually I guess all of us could probably do that :) Application from Friendfeed users perhaps? - Cameron Neylon

so any pointers of how can a non-profit / tax-free corporation can be legally formed (how difficult would it be to found one) ? Maybe the LifeScientistsFF non-profit - hehe ... cause that's a requirement for the grant... - Ntino

I have no idea how forming non-profit looks in other countries, but if here in Poland it is relatively straightforward, it cannot be hard anywhere else :). Non-profit can be formed by a single person, and that's a recommended way. Forming anything legal across many countries is really, really hard. - Pawel Szczesny

Look at us, gathering like hungry vultures at the slightest whiff of potential funding! Makes my socialist-leaning heart hurt to realise that we're never going to fund the Open Science of biogang daydreams with public money. - Bill Hooker

Public money is overrated, but then I am anything but socialist :) - Deepak Singh

Bego from ChemistsWithoutBorders has just gone through the non-profit process - it takes time but he might have advice http://www.chemistswithoutborders.com - Jean-Claude Bradley

it worked! http://usefulchem.blogspot.com/2008... - Jean-Claude Bradley

Cheers! - Egon Willighagen

Thanks Egon! FF works - Jean-Claude Bradley

great ! congratulations :) - Pedro Beltrao

Awesome! Congratulations, Jean-Claude. - Bill Hooker