Maintainers wanted

We are currently looking for maintainer(s) for the following sub-packages

BLAST parsers

The BioJava BLAST parser modules are among the most frequently used bits of BioJava. It is possible to parse a large variety of BLAST-family output files, but the framework is not complete. We are looking for a motivated individual who want to take over the leadership over these modules, interact with a large user community and claim responsibility for maintaining and further developing these modules.

Among the currently open tasks are:

* add support for PSI-blast parsing
* support parsing of result files with multiple queries
* support XML-output parsing
* refactor the blast packages to provide more understandable package names. (for Biojava-v3)

Sequence IO packages

The IO packages are responsible for reading common bioinformatics formats and producing RichSequence and BioEntry objects. Where possible the IO packages also write RichSequence and BioEntries out to common formats. While mature and generally well tested, these packages are intensively used and variations in formats reveal occasional bugs in biojava. Volunteers are needed to help maintain and develop these packages so as to provide rapid responses to queries and bug reports but also to extend the packages while keeping the overall feel as similar as possible. Volunteers with experience in ORM, especially Hibernate are needed to help support and extend the ORM between BioJava and the BioSQL schema.

Among the currently open tasks are:

* Update the cookbook IO examples to use the org.biojavax packages. * Provide more cookbook examples.
* Add support for DDBJ format.
* Run profilers to increase the speed of the parsers.
* Add more tests including examples of troublesome input files.
* Optimize the performance of the Hibernate based ORM between RichSequence objects and the BioSQL database.