Bioconductor’s community chat is moving from Slack to Zulip on Monday 2 June 2025 . The transition ensures long-term access to discussions and better reflects our open-source values. Why We’re Moving to Zulip Our Slack Pro subscription ends on Sunday 1 June. Switching to the free tier would mean losing older messages — including valuable conversations, decisions, and shared knowledge.

In the beginning … … there was a 9-track tape shipped from Bell Labs. S would be installed for “unix”. Extensions could be programmed in Fortran. I started using this around 1985. S REPORT presaged Sweave and knitr: troff, eqn, pic could be interlarded with S computations. Here’s a taste of inputs and outputs for S REPORT.

In March 2025, Bioconductor marked an exciting milestone—our first in-person course on the African continent. Hosted by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nairobi, this five-day workshop brought together 32 researchers for hands-on training in genomic data analysis using R and Bioconductor.

Introduction Open source provides an accessible platform for individuals to develop and refine their skills while collaborating on real-world projects. For tech enthusiasts with little to no experience, contributing to open-source projects is a great way to gain hands-on experience, learn from experts, and become part of a global community. One program that actively supports newcomers in open source is Outreachy.