On 17 May 2017 at 01:09, Walter P. Little <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 4:38 PM, Ken Moffat <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 10:57:04PM +1200, Simon Geard wrote: >> > On Tue, 2017-05-16 at 11:03 +0100, Richard Melville wrote: >> > >> > > Recently, I saw Windows XP on a consultants terminal at a local >> > > hospital. When I expressed my concern, and disbelief, he just threw >> > > up his hands in a helpless manner and said that that was what he was >> > > stuck with. Now we've seen the results of that folly. >> > >> > My understanding is that that has little to do with Windows, and more >> > to do with the nature of the healthcare IT industry - lots of small >> > companies that sell something useful, but go out of business quite >> > quickly due to an inability to make money out of it. As such, hospitals >> > are full of unsupported old software - often tied to specialised >> > hardware - that can't easily be made to work on a newer OS. >> > >> > > In healthcare, there is an additional regulatory dimension (especially in > the US) that effectively discourages keeping things up to date, regardless > of the operating system used. Medical equipment has to be formally > validated by the manufacturer, and FDA has traditionally included the > hardware and operating system as part of what must be validated. As such, > many (most?) manufacturers include the computers with the platform > preinstalled as part of the equipment, and the platform is locked down to > prevent the end user from applying any updates. Any update to the platform > or the application software has to be revalidated by the manufacturer and > applied to the machine as a field service. > > That said, in recent years, FDA has stated that updates that solely > address security issues are exempt from this requirement, but it takes time > for the industry to adapt. > > Not to stray too far off the original topic, but thought I'd chime in here > since this regulatory hell has been something I've been dealing with for > nearly 20 years. > Some excellent points that explain the complexity of the situation in which we find ourselves. Maybe only government legislation (an unlikely event) can begin to remedy the malaise. In the UK, within Government, the current position is that any new project must look at adopting free and open source software first. If no solution is found, only then may proprietary software be used. I'm pretty sure, however, that this is advisory rather than mandatory, so, factoring in the power, and self-interest, of the huge IT companies already involved with the Government, there's unlikely to be much change in the foreseeable future. > > >> I don't totally agree - yes, specialist hardware/software only gets >> developed for one OS. But as with all things, keeping things going >> should be a budgeted cost. My understanding is that we (British >> taxpayers) used to pay M$ for XP support after it was EOL'd, but >> somebody in the government decided to cancel the contract. >> >> For any large business, paying for software support is an accepted >> way of working: I used to support a payroll system based on a >> proprietary package, and I don't think anything libre could have >> kept up with regulatory (tax) changes in an acceptable manner. But >> our current overlords would have problems managing the proverbial >> ... in a brewery. >> > > I agree that ostensibly when the software is proprietary, there is a > non-ambiguous business motivation to keeping abreast of regulatory changes > (especially in the financial domain)... and this increases geometrically if > the software must support regulatory constraints in multiple geographic > domains. > > However, an interesting development in recent years is the ability to > outsource out the regulatory component via API. Avalara, for example, has > made a nice business in handling the sales tax landscape (which can get > super complicated as a business grows). They provide an API that any > business application can interface with, your application sends out a > request for a sales tax calculation, it returns the result. If a libre > solution integrates with the Avalara service, one of the biggest reasons to > not use a libre solution *goes away.* Similar thing can be done with ADP > for payroll. > Yes, some UK libraries have adopted this approach. Most in-house library management systems are proprietary, but some libraries have moved their systems to the, so-called, "cloud", thus freeing them to use whichever operating systems and software they choose in-house. The good news is that the "cloud" offerings are usually the free and open source Koha or Evergreen. Both of these systems can also be used locally in-house, if preferred. > > >> >> Sorry, I've been trying to keep politics out of this, but it seems >> better to assign the blame where it is due. >> > I'm with you there Ken. Richard
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