<DIV>The free/open source approach has grown from a minor activity to a significant producer of robust, task-orientated software for a wide variety of situations and applications. Examples range from core infrastructure platforms such as the Apache web-server, powerful document indexing and search tools, such as Lucene, through to major user-orientated systems such as Mediawiki (which powers Wikipedia) and Drupal (which powers many diverse websites).<br><BR>To life science informatics groups, these systems present an appealing proposition - high quality software at a very attractive price. The contributors and editors consider how industry and applied research groups have embraced these resources and discuss practical implementations that address real-world business problems.</div>