James Gray wrote: >I personally have been taken aback by >the serious animosity toward Intersystems that has been posted on this list. >My guess is that it is only a few people expressing a lot of animosity.
It is not clear to me where this feeling of animosity is coming from or who precipitated it. I don't recall seeing anything on this list ([email protected]) that I would interpret as animosity. Perhaps animosity is not the right word. I feel compelled to respond because I have in the past voiced opinions about the demise of the MUMPS Users Group and the MDC and the disappearance of Datatree and Micronetics and the need for Open Source solutions in healthcare information systems. I know that it is easy to misinterpret emotions and intentions from the written words of people you know through frequent personal contact and much more so those you have never met. I do not know whether any of my writings have been construed as animosity. If so, then you misunderstand me and, I think, much of what has been expressed by others who advocate for adoption of Open Source software and policies. Then again, perhaps you have a different meaning of the word animosity than I do. WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn] animosity n : a feeling of ill will arousing active hostility [syn: animus, bad blood] Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913] Animosity \An`i*mos"i*ty\, n.; pl. Animosities. [F. animosit['e], fr. L. animositas. See Animose, Animate, v.t.] 2. Violent hatred leading to active opposition; active enmity; energetic dislike. --Macaulay. Syn: Enmity; hatred; opposition. -- Animosity, Enmity. Enmity be dormant or concealed; animosity is active enmity, inflamed by collision and mutual injury between opposing parties. The animosities which were continually springing up among the clans in Scotland kept that kingdom in a state of turmoil and bloodshed for successive ages. I personally feel no ill will (and certainly no hatred nor enmity) towards anyone on this list or off who offers serious questions or answers to technical questions. I have not been personally injured or attacked or threatened by anyone from Intersystems or by any actions of that company and I have never intended harm or insult to anyone on this list or associated with MUMPS. Neither have I noticed that sort of intent in the messages by others that I have read. Perhaps animosity has been expressed by someone off the list, but I have not read it and I have no wish to encourage it. On the other hand, some of us do have some strongly held opinions based on many years of experience working with MUMPS and related technologies in the medical computing arena and communicating with others having similar interests and knowledge. I personally believe that vendor lock-in to proprietary software and the monopolistic practices of vendors who achieve it present a very serious and incredibly costly long term problem for the development and maintainance of medical information systems. Freedom from vendor lock-in was the hallmark of the MUMPS Users Group for many years and the essential reason for existence of the MDC and the MUMPS Standard. That is not to say that vendors are bad or that their products and technical representatives deserve no respect, but that people who have some responsibility for the long term interests of large organizations (and the not-so-large, mine is pretty small compared to many hospitals) have a duty to protect their organizations and the technologies they depend on from vendor lock-in. Many of us have been around long enough to see that the interests of vendor companies do not always coincide with the best interests of all of their customers or clients. Intersystems buy out of the biggest competing implementations of MUMPS (DSM, DTM, and MSM) and killing off their development seems to make sense from a business point of view even if they were technically superior and lower cost. So also Microsoft's attempts to kill off Netscape and Java and many other products and standards that they did not own. Both of those moves seemed antagonistic to the interests of the many organizations that depended on the technology affected. There are many other examples and many other companies. IBM was once the monopolist and Microsoft the challenger. Once an information system becomes critically important to the mission of a large organization, it cannot be easily or quickly switched out for something else and they are just stuck if the software is proprietary and the business goes defunct or is bought out by someone who chooses to kill the product or raise the license fees by an order of magnitude - unless they have contracted continuing rights to the source code. The same thing applies to any foundational elements that that information system is based upon, like MUMPS. I remember being amazed at the defensive foresight shown by Sanchez in acquiring Greystone and GT.M. to protect the foundation of the banking products they had developed on top of GT.M. If I understand correctly, this move was essentially forced on Sanchez by the need of their clients to be assured of continuing rights to the source code, in the event that something happened to Sanchez. What if the VA or the MDC had acquired the rights to a version of MUMPS and sponsored its development as a reference standard? What if they had put a small fraction of the money they spent on MUMPS license fees into sponsoring continued development of an Open Source implementation of MUMPS? What if they or any other of the licensees of DSM, DTM, or MSM had simply contracted for rights to continue development of those MUMPS implementations in case the vendor went out of business or ceased development? --------------------------------------- Jim Self Systems Architect, Lead Developer VMTH Computer Services, UC Davis (http://www.vmth.ucdavis.edu/us/jaself) ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/ _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
