Hi Erik, As one of the new transitional board members I would like to thank you for your comments and suggestions.
I don't think any of us would consider the White Paper as near to being a finished article but there was consensus that, given the long wait, it was good enough to go to the openEHR community for what I hope will be robust discussion and criticism. As you say, there are a number of issues which lack clarity and need further discussion. The issue of CC-BY vs. CC-BY-SA has, of course, been extensively discussed and although the previous board took a decision to adopt SA, this is very much up for further discussion. Like many others, I did not get particularly involved in these discussions as it felt to me (perhaps incorrectly) to be a somewhat arcane and legalistic debate over a pretty fine point. What might be helpful to me and others would be some clear practical examples of the kind of scenario for which CC-BY-SA is thought to be required (rightly or wrongly). As I understand it the debate centres around whether this particular kind of 'misuse' can really be controlled by CC-BY-SA without imposing inappropriate restrictions on the corpus of work as a whole and sending the wrong message to interested parties. I did enjoy your reference to ''transitional arrangements' in North Africa and the Miiddle East :-) Much as I am attracted to the idea of participating in an 'interim' 25 year reign of terror, I am absolutely clear that the role of this board is to manage the transitional period as rapidly as possible. I think setting an end date is correct in principle but might be difficult to judge in practice. Having said that, Dec 2012 feels to me like a reasonable start point for discussion. I think the White Paper correctly identifies the need to engage institutional and commercial organisations directly in any new governance arrangements. openEHR benefits in many ways from not being an 'official' standards body,but the lack of organisational governance has been a significant barrier to engagement of potential institutional stakeholders. Whilst the core of openEHR activities should, I think, definitely draw heavily on an Apache Foundation-like approach, I am not convinced that this will be sufficient. Balancing this requirement against the legitimate needs of ordinary members will be challenging and I am sure you and others will have a number of ideas in this area. I expect there may well be some robust exchanges of opinion over the coming weeks and months but I am very confident that as a community we have a pretty coherent and unified sense of the end goal : An open specification, backed up by open source software, and open clinical knowledge artifacts, with as little encumbrance on further use as possible, commercial or otherwise, and community-led development very much in the mode of open-source software projects. This does need to be anchored by much more inclusive governance arrangements which blend the needs of community members and the 'open ethos' above, with the organisational checks and balances that institutional stakeholders will expect from a body which produces 'standard models'. After a period where we have moved from specification to development and now into real implementation, I am increasingly confident that openEHR has a solid and exciting future. I am looking forward to the challenge of helping get us into the right shape to support this future. Regards, Ian Dr Ian McNicoll office +44 (0)1536 414 994 fax +44 (0)1536 516317 mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859 skype ianmcnicoll ian.mcnicoll at oceaninformatics.com Clinical Modelling Consultant,?Ocean Informatics, UK openEHR Clinical Knowledge Editor www.openehr.org/knowledge Honorary Senior Research Associate, CHIME, UCL BCS Primary Health Care ?www.phcsg.org On 6 September 2011 10:05, Erik Sundvall <erik.sundvall at liu.se> wrote: > Thanks for replying Sam! > > Erik Wrote (to openEHR-technical at openehr.org): >>> Was that whitepaper formally ratified by the new board, or by the old board, >>> or is it's current state just a suggestion by Sam? > > On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 17:58, Sam Heard <sam.heard at oceaninformatics.com> > wrote: >> [Sam Heard] The whitepaper was ratified by the participants in the planning >> process, the current Board (Profs. Kalra, Ingram and myself) and the new >> Transitional Board. > > This is a bit worrying for the period until a broader board can be > elected. I was hoping that somebody within the new board would be > interested enough and have time to take licensing issues and community > feedback seriously, let's hope that the board does a bit more research > and community dialogue before ratifying a new version of this > whitepaper. Could somebody from the board please confirm that you'll > take a serious look at this in the near future? > > Erik wrote: >> What is the mandate period of the transitional board? When will the >> suggested new structure with an elected board start? > > On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 17:58, Sam Heard <sam.heard at oceaninformatics.com> > wrote: >> [Sam Heard] I for one am very happy to express a date for elections if >> organisations embrace these arrangements. Clearly if there is no interest in >> participating from industry or organisations then we would have to think >> again. I suspect we will then move to election of the Board by Members but >> it is our wish to provide a means of determining the governance for >> openEHR?s key sponsors. The aim is to balance the Members with governance >> from the funders and sponsors. Some may prefer a democratic organisation top >> to bottom; we do not think this will achieve the best results. > > So there is no absolute end date set. :-( > > The "if organisations embrace these arrangements" part is worrying, > especially since we already have seen failed attempts at getting > buy-in from "organisations". > > Can't you set an absolute latest date (e.g. at the very latest > December 31, 2012) when the new arrangements will start no matter if > big organisations have made use of the introductory offer of buying a > position in the board? If not, we risk having an interim board > forever, and we really don't need any more delays in the journey > towards community-driven governance. If you get buy-in from the number > of big players you want before that absolute end date then there would > be nothing stopping you from doing the transition earlier than the > "latest date". > > Erik wrote: >> The thoughts behind the third point in the "Principles of licencing" are >> understandable, but as stated over and over again, e.g. at... >> http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+IP+License+Revision+Proposal?focusedCommentId=13041696#comment-13041696 >> ...the SA part of CC-BY-SA won't help against copyright and patent abuse. >> Only fighting possible upcoming bad patents in particular and bad patent >> laws in general might save the openEHR community form patent abuse. > > On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 17:58, Sam Heard <sam.heard at oceaninformatics.com> > wrote: >> [Sam Heard] If this is true then the SA part of the license has no value. If >> this is true then I have not heard this before. > > I am very glad if you might have started to see the lack of value in > SA for archetypes. Using pure CC-BY (for both archetypes AND > specifications) would make the first six points under "Principles of > licensing" unnecessary and reduce confusion. > > At the same time I am very worried about the totally amazing > information blocking filter you must have built in if you have "not > heard" this argument before. Several people have been questioning your > reasoning on this very point for years! > > On the official openEHR-wikipage set up for this particular question > when community feedback was requested... > http://www.openehr.org/wiki/display/oecom/openEHR+IP+License+Revision+Proposal > ...you have several people (including Tom Beale) in clear text saying > that CC-BY-SA will NOT protect against patent attacks. (Scroll down to > the heading "Discussion summaries regarding CC-BY versus CC-BY-SA for > content models".) > > How on earth could you and the entire board miss that when writing up > the draft for the transition whitepaper and when making earlier > license decisions? > > One thing that however is very efficient in fighting patent trolls is > "prior art". Thus one of the best protections regarding archetypes > etc. is to have as much as possible of development completely public, > indexed and archived by trusted sites (like http://www.archive.org/). > This means always making sure to allow enough search engines and not > requiring login in order to read archetype discussions and thoughts in > development repositories (things like the CKM). The earlier date the > mention of an idea can be traced back to, the more patent claims it > will protect against. > > Best Regards, > Erik Sundvall > erik.sundvall at liu.se http://www.imt.liu.se/~erisu/? Tel: +46-13-286733 > > P.s. I agree with Pablo & Diego that we need to talk about > communication between several repositories, not just discuss the > current openEHR-hosted CKM. > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical >
