[2] The foundation participates in the Google Summer of Code, acting as an umbrella organisation for individual bioinformatics-related projects.
[3][4] The Open Bioinformatics Foundation was started in 2001, arising from the BioJava, BioPerl and BioPython projects.
[1] In October 2012, the foundation began an association with Software in the Public Interest (SPI), a US-based non-profit which aids other organizations in the creation and distribution of free and open-source software.
[1][5] The foundation is governed by a board of directors, representing various Bio* projects.
[7] The foundation hosts servers for mailing lists, websites, and code repositories for a number of bioinformatics-related open source projects, including:[8]