Ross Davey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Tim Churches wrote: > > There is a lot of goodwill toward ArgusConnect because of its open > > source policy, but a very small amount of effort is required on the > > part of ArgusConnect and/or HOWF to these operational matters > > in order to maintain that goodwill. > > > > > Cripes Tim. This is a bit like a hospital registrar being up all night > saving lives, totally under-resourced, pulling off a few medical > miracles on touch-and-go patients, being underpaid, tired as hell and > then being chastised by the hospital management for not completing his > Tax Declaration form. Important; but nobody is going to die if it > doesnt get done immediately. :-[
Yeah, yeah, been there, done that. The problem, Ross, is that ArgusConnect, like all the other players in the Australian secure health messaging maketplace (Healthlink included) is a small-to-medium-sized business and like all such concerns, there is an ever-present danger that it will go belly-up without much warning, taking all assets including source code with it. Nnote that the risk of ArgusConnect going belly-up is no greater or less, or perhaps no more quantifiable by customers, than the risk of business failure of any of the other secure messaging players. However, one of the big advantages of ArgusConnect is that its principle IP is open sourced, which vastly mitigates the business failure risk and that is a big, big advantage that it holds over it competitors. However, that advantage only obtains if ArgusConnect takes the small amount of time and trouble to actually make fairly recent code available under an open sources license (and not just make a completely unlicensed and unannotated copy available by anonymous SVN - as I said, all that is wanting is a README file or two). If ArgusConnect goes belly-up and is put in the hands of an administrator, the first thing that administrator will do is lock down all assets, including IP such as source code, as tight as a drum. Thus it will be too late for you or anyone else at that stage to correct the open source licensing issues. And I dare say that if there are warning signs of imminent business failure at ArguisConnect, then the last thing on your priority list will be fixing the open source licensing - you'll be bailing water as fast as you can instead. None of that is to suggest that ArgusConnect is about to fail as a business, but that is nevertheless always a possibility and thus a (difficult to quantify) risk for customers and potential customers. Therefore, the time to attend to open source matters is now, Ross. Just build teh open sourcing into your normal business processes and it will cease to be an issue and a source of irritation and contention. Either that or forfeit any claims to risk mitigation as a result of Argus being opened sourced. Perhaps all of this sounds harsh, but the not-quite-not-yet-when-we-get-around-to-it-too-busy-now manner in which Argus has been open source has persisted for several years now. Tim C > > Ross Davey > ArgusConnect _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
