Richard,
Anybody who believes that an open source product will gain traction
without the support of a major financial backer is a naive idealist. If
you were to create something useful (and free) for doctors to use, I
propose that you quit your day job because this is what you can expect:
1. 99% of users expect it to be as easy to install as WinAmp.
2. Most users expect you to assist them with the most trivial questions,
regardless of whether they are paying you for the support.
3. Interaction with other products will be demanded of your product, and
you will be undermined and sabotaged by the larger vendors
4. Your altruistic motives will be derided by your competition, with
doubt being cast on your true agenda
5. You will be vilified by the opensource community if you dare to
deviate from their puritanical, idealistic view of software.
6. Large companies will claim to cooperate with you, while using your
product as a pawn in their subversion of their competitors.
7. Some government committee will threaten to define a "standard" some
time in the future, scaring the hell out of your users and undermining
confidence in your product.
Do yourself a favour, drop the idea. Slopping food for pigs in a moslem
country is less thankless, and the pigs won't drag you into the gutter
nor try to screw you.
Andrew
Richard Hosking wrote:
I have struggled for several years(albeit part time and
intermittently) to get to the point where I could contribute to a
significant coding project. Still struggling with wxWidgets to write a
small demo app - I regard myself as reasonably able when it comes to
maths/electronics/assembly level coding, but I seem to be mired in
various interacting errors and not making much progress.
(Oh well maybe the brain is getting old)
Still there does seem to be a lot of interest for such a project.
It would be "subversive" - in the sense that it will be free to users
and the entity would make money out of installation and support. It
would undermine the current market players.
I think there is a lot of potential gain for somemone in the gap
between M$/proprietary licensing and hardware and a free Linux based
system
I would envisage a capable system with accounting/appointments/medical
software
Fair enough about getting buyin from larger groups - but if you are
not trying to make money, what does it matter?
A free capable system will surely get traction once a demo site is
available.
R
Les Ferguson wrote:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of john hilton
I still can't work out why any of the "from the ground up" medical
software major redesigns didn't consider a linux development. If it
is well known that Australian GPs are shy of paying for things, the
savings on the OS, Office, Database, Antivirus, would surely be an
enticement to paying th medical software developers proportionally
more for their product.
jh
I wonder that myself a lot. With the likes of WXWidgets it should be
relatively painless to produce C++ core modules and/or WXPython modules
that are easily distributable to multiple platforms.
Open source gaming is a prime example of this, with a lot of
Windows-only 'shareware', compared to a lot of open source games that
were developed on or for Linux but also have a Windows build released,
just cos they can.
I know if I was still writing software (as opposed to writing about
writing it) I would go for WXPython myself; I am not convinced that the
web-server/web-browser based model is necessarily the best, when a more
powerful user-interface can be developed in a cross-platform toolset,
and can also make use of web-service architectures when needed.
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Andrew N. Shrosbree B.Sc, B.Ec
Technical Director
ArgusConnect Pty Ltd
http://www.argusconnect.com.au
Suite 4, Greenhill Centre, Mt Helen
Victoria, Australia
Tel: +61 (0)3 5335 2214
Mob: +61 (0)415 645 291 (if I don't answer landline within 3 rings)
Skype: andrewshroz
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