Hi Tim I can't understand why you would suggest that someones concern at openness (or lack of) at the board level is irrevelant. I can see from your email that you gave given up on openehr as an organisation which I think is a great pity.
It seems to me that as the take up and interest in openehr is increasing, it creates more anxieties around these issues of openness and control. To date, the structure of openehr has been to have an active community with a small core of experts working on the specifications. The process has been an engineering approach with change requests and decisions not being made democratically, but by those who have the expertise to do the work in a sensible way. It's a completely different approach to the usual SDO democratic way of thinking and has enabled the specs to be developed rapidly and to a high quality. I have no personal insight into how a decision was reached about the licensing, or if it is set in stone. We probably don't have a really good process about making these kinds of decisions yet. The structure of the foundation needs to evolve with the changing needs of the community and it is changing and evolving. We have to remember that the current foundation has no funding apart from UCLs support and all work is currently completely voluntary. As the foundation evolves, this will change and should enhance our ability to be better at communication. I think that openehr is healthy and that the desire of everyone involved is not to control or prevent openness, but to make sure that the decisions made now work well in the future. Let's keep talking - there will always be differences of opinion. Regards Hugh On 03/06/2010, at 8:18, Tim Cook <timothywayne.cook at gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, 2010-06-02 at 12:15 +0200, Erik Sundvall wrote: > >> Is the case that Sam or somebody else has later presented strong >> arguments to the board that could not and will not be presented to >> the >> community in the mailinglists or on the wiki? If arguments can not be >> presented openly, then the risk increases that people suspect the >> board or some of its members to have hidden agendas, and that is a >> bad >> thing for an open project like openEHR. > > Thanks for that research and organization work Erik. > > Whether Sam (as a Board member) or anyone else has presented any > 'strong arguments' to the other Board members is an unknown and > frankly, I think, is irrelevant. > > Over the past decade, we can probably count on our fingers the > number of > threads that a Board member other than Sam has participated in on > any of > the open mailing lists. They have participated on the ARB list and in > private group mails where the audience is controlled. IMHO, this > speaks > loudly as to the desire of (or lack of desire) those members have to > demonstrate any community building leadership. Neither has there been > any move towards true open democracy in Board membership. > > A sparkling precedent exists that free-for-all openness works. The > Internet we have today would not exist if Bob Kahn, Vint Cerf and > others > at DARPA had taken the same stance that we see the openEHR Board of > Directors taking today. Even though they worked for the US Department > of Defense. They realized that autonomous but cooperating groups was > the best way to ensure (and insure) global uptake of the TCP/IP > specifications. Even if they weren't perfect (the 32 bit address > space > being a glowing example) they were a perfect starting place. The fact > that they could be passed around, translated, etc. gave rise to the > many > implementations. > > The comments regarding "protecting the users" is, IMHO, a Trojan > Horse. > What I perceive that is inside the horse, I'll keep to myself for the > time being. So, Trojan Horse or Red Herring; it is a mis-leading > reasoning. People need to be able to FREELY copy, derive and > implement > the specifications as they see fit. No one is going to intentionally > attempt to monopolize the specifications using an embrace and extend > or > any other approach. To do so would simply isolate them. > > But after nearly 10 years of trying to convince them otherwise I have > given up on changing the minds and approaches of the central authority > of openEHR. This is why the Multi-Level Health Information Modeling > (http://www.mlhim.org) umbrella project was created. In less than one > year we are already seeing project funding and porting of existing > projects to MLHIM. > > Attitude makes a difference. You are all welcome to join us if you > wish. > > Kind Regards, > Tim > > > > > -- > *************************************************************** > Timothy Cook, MSc > > LinkedIn Profile:http://www.linkedin.com/in/timothywaynecook > Skype ID == (upon request) > Academic.Edu Profile: http://uff.academia.edu/TimothyCook > > You may get my Public GPG key from popular keyservers or > from this link http://timothywayne.cook.googlepages.com/home > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical
