Ken Rubin wrote:
>
Hi, I have been off on Y2K isolation for a week or so :) and am
gradually catching up.
Thanks for this information. Your comments just happened to fall into a
stream of other comments about the difference between open source and
public domain. While the definitive statement of what open source is
can be found here:
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html ,
I would like to make a small comment below.
>
> GCPR intends to provide the supporting infrastructure for use within and beyond
> the U.S. Government (to include contracted care providers, state healthcare
> systems, etc.) As such, I believe it is in the best interests of GCPR agencies
> to make these components available publically.
>
I believe that Dan Johnson has also covered this territory: open
source becomes viable not just because of statement of principle, but
because it actively encourages a mode of operation. That mode of
operation is that both paid for and freely contributed work coexist on
the same project. Making code and results publicly available is not
sufficient to sustain an open source project. The results of the open
source project are aligned with the internal goals of an organization
via participation such that contribution of paid for work is internally
justified. That is to say that an organization which has committed to
using the results of an open source project has a vested interest in
contributing to that open source project.
I think that the recent 'build up' of commercial activity around
linux, mozilla and apache shows this most clearly. So much work has
been contributed by commercial entities to these collections of software
as to make them 'mindset' equal to senior IT management of commercial
alternatives. Who would have guessed that one could make several billion
dollar companies by collecting, supporting and improving 'free'
software?
And it is this phenomena that an open source MR/MIS needs to leverage
to win internal management support. This is extremely difficult to
achieve, despite the long history of excellent 'in-house' designed
medical systems within the US. Somehow, that success has been turned
into a liability. Open source provides a 'new' variation on 'free' and
'internal development' that has demonstrably changed the situation such
that what was once a source of liability is now a source of opportunity.
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