David More <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 5. Red Hat strikes healthcare research deal > > Never shy about taking on new markets, Red Hat has struck a deal with > the University of > North Carolina under which it will encourage the use of open source > technology in > healthcare research, biotechnology, bioinformatics and public policy. > The deal follows a > larger announcement by Red Hat in which it launched its Enterprise > Healthcare Platform in > cooperation with McKesson and Intel. > > Under the terms of the partnership, Red Hat will establish a location on > UNC's research > campus, and work with both public and private-sector tenants there to > help them look at > open source options. (Sounds like the tenants will be a bit of a captive > audience!) Red > Hat has been working to spark broader discussions of open source > technology since at least > 1999, when it opened a non-profit organization--a grantmaker and think > tank--known as the > Red Hat Center for Open Source. The company and three large shareholders > kicked in $8 > million to jump start the non-profit's operations, intended to offer > support for varied > open-source related projects.
Red Hat are OK - they get open-source, they release everything they develop themselves as open source, they release things they acquire as open-source. The development is welcome. But he deal with McKssons is a red (hat) herring. McKesson's sell expensive, closed-source health information system software, and all they have done is port it so that it runs on Rd Hat Linux, instead of just Sun Solaris or IBM AIX or whatever. Big deal! No great step forward. They have NOT open-sourced their health info products, that's for sure. *But*, an Australian initiative to develop an open-source primary care reference system, as has been mooted here many times, may well be able to make use of the Red Hat health development lab resources. Tim C _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
