The group first met in the Italian town of Pistoia, Tuscany, since some members were already attending another meeting. It is not true to say that the group chooses locations based on their restaurant quality, but Pistoia is a very nice place. It is also home to a company making trains.

The research activities will be conducted through working and technical projects collaborating companies and public organisations. Any legal entity and individual if representing themselves can participate in such projects.

Please submit your application using the application form available at..... (link to Members -> How to join)

The priorities of Pistoia will be determined by its member organisations, so please consider becoming a Pistoian.

Pistoia Alliance has member fees and will use these fees for the best interests of the Pistoia Alliance charter. This could involve funding bursaries to attend meetings of the working and technical groups or to help promote the ideas of Pistoia Alliance to a wider audience.

The Pistoia Alliance Board of Directors (Link) makes final decisions. Operational matters are taken care of by the operational team (Link). Projects, once defined, work largely independently. For an overview see (link to Slide 8 in http://docs.google.com/a/pistoiaalliance.org/Presentation?docid=dfxf2x6z...). For the legal details see (Link to the By-laws.

In contrast to other open source intitiatives, Pistoia Alliance is focused on providing a platform for defining common conceptual steps of the drug discovery workflow.

It does not attempt to provide a complete solution itself. Solution implementers are invited to participate in Pistoia Alliance in order to influcence the design of the interfaces, but otherwise free in their choice implementation approach and commercial concept.

Pistoia Alliance is a not for profit organization that works under an open source, collaborative model. Specifications defined by the Pistoia Alliance are put in the public domain as specified (Link -> IPR).