Bert, The example of SNOMED is a good one.
Looking at SNOMED we must ask the question: Are words in a dictionary proprietary? Do we have to pay for the use of these words in our conversations? Of course the answer is: NO. We have to pay for the medium: the book, the CD-ROM, the application. The maintenance of the words used in any language is most often paid for by the State. Language is a free commodity. SNOMED is a Reference Terminology. When local users map their local codes to SNOMED codes only the Terminology Server that does translations using SNOMED needs a licence. In its proposed pricing scheme SNOMED will ask more money from rich countries (millions) and very small amounts (ten-hundred Euro;'s) from poor countries. The are very sensible and indexed to the Gross National Product. Gerard -- <private> -- Gerard Freriks, arts Huigsloterdijk 378 2158 LR Buitenkaag The Netherlands T: +31 252 544896 M: +31 653 108732 On 3-mei-2006, at 11:23, Bert Verhees wrote: >> >> You refer to machine computer system interfaces and that these might >> be proprietary. Yes they could and will. >> But when the holy grail is about plug-and-play interoperability then >> these interfaces (archetypes) must be free to use. > > Gerard, how about SNOMED-tables, they are expensive, and many other > terminology-tables? > Will there be free replacement for that? > > This question is also relevant for third world countries, or > health-information-systems used by poor organisations, f.e. free > health care > systems for illegal immigrants in Europe and the USA. > > They may be able to read messages, because messages probably have > beside the > code, also the description, but they cannot produce messages, > because they > will not be able to code their content > > Thanks > Bert -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20060503/0032b207/attachment.html>
