[cure]

> What I don't like in this post, is the call for non-adoption when the author has a competing format (CRAM) for which the patent situation and the performance is not clear. It seems a biased opinion.

Actually, the author has been part of the genomics community for a long time. CRAM (and BAM) are existing de-facto standards. There is no rent-seeking organization behind those formats; there are no patents.

MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group, is trying to move into the genomics space to make money. They are trying to create a 'standard' called MPEG-G. The very same people who are driving the MPEG-G spec are trying to obtain patents that cover the format.

These patent applications are probably invalid. They seem to be obvious and there seems to be lots of prior art in CRAM and other applications and papers. Proving this in order to invalidate them will be time-consuming and expensive. But also necessary, because you can be sure that the patents, if granted, will be used to extort money from people in bio-informatics. They may also be used offensively against CRAM.

This is a complete waste of time.