Tim Churches a écrit :
Hmmm, does Minoru plan to assert its trade mark against the Openhealth
list on Yahoo (see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/ )?
I'm not expecting that I'll have to. It depends on the the other list
and my decisions over the next few weeks.
The way I see it, there are two possibilities for the motivations of the
creators of the other list:
1) It really is a question of the technical capabilities of the list and
the lack of support.
In this case, the folks running the yahoo list will have no problem
changing the name to avoid confusion. The two lists will either merge at
some point or specialize to meet different needs of the community. The
yahoo list has critical mass, so a name change is unlikely to cause its
members to leave.
2) The motivation is to profit from the goodwill that Minoru has in the
community on an ongoing basis.
In this case, the folks running the yahoo list will resist changing the
name and it will be necessary to assert the trademark to protect
Minoru's interests and reputation.
But, as I said, I'm not expecting this to be necessary. I believe that
we can come to some understanding that is best for everyone.
----
In any event, the needs of the community have substantially changed
since the Openhealth list was created. When we started, there were just
a small number of open source projects. They were duplicating each
others work, the creators had never met or communicated, and the level
of competition was preventing collaboration to move ahead more quickly.
Thanks to you and the other members of the Openhealth list, there is
much more understanding and appreciation of the merits of different
approaches to solve different problems. There is also much more
collaboration as projects exchange not only ideas, but modules (such as
FreeB for example). Ongoing communication between projects is still
important, but there are now many mechanisms and places where that happens.
The question I asked in my first reponse to your note "Why are you
here?" This is a serious question we should address to determine the
future of the list and whether it still has a value in the community.
The increasing number of open source healthcare projects creates a need
to objective comparative reviews and critiques to help refine their
work. There is also a need for greater communication and colllaboration
between physicians and engineers one the one hand, and open source
developers and medical informatics research on the other. Can this list
help meet these needs?
------
In terms of the technical capabilities of the list, the reason for the
long delay in upgrading the list is that my internet service provider
was not ready. I considered hosting the list on an open source product
or moving it to a free service in the past, but both these options had
drawbacks.
It is just a fact of life that Minoru's sites are subject to attack. My
ISPs report that our sites are subject to more security incidents than
other sites they host, including e-commerce sites. I have hosted other
lists directly, and came to the conclusion that the Openhealth list
absolutely needs stronger security support than we could ensure
in-house. For example, getting an e-mail saying you have more than
10,000 administrative requests. The current system, while crude and out
of date, enables us to have a quiet conversation without hurculean effort.
As for hosting the list on a free service, these services are not
charities. I notice that the project sites for many open source projects
now have advertising for directly competing proprietary products. The
archive for the openhealth list suffers from the same blight. Many of
the the "lurkers" on the openhealth list are doctors, a highly prized
market segment for advertisers. Another big segment is commercial and
non-profit open source enterprises who cannot and should not permit
their work to used as advertising media for their competitors.
Just this month, my ISP is rolling out a better mailing list service
which they will support and protect, so it now possible to provide a
friendlier interface without the problems mentioned above.
It is up to you. Why are you here?
-Brian
