On Tue, 11 Dec 2001, Brian Bray wrote: > Before we all go for another round of "my project list is better than > your project list",
Brian, I am not sure highlighting differences in our respective projects leads to conclusions of superiority or inferiority. I do appreciate your willingness to describe some of the plans that the Spirit project has for its EuSpirit site. I will describe the corresponding features that the OIO Library offers and ask some clarifying questions. I hope we can both learn something from this exchange. > let me point the thread was about the Spirit Link Exchange service, > not the Spirit software index. In the case of the OIO Library, links to software projects and "reading materials" are hierarchically classified and stored in the same online library. Of course, they are classified under different top-level folders. > This is a separate service that holds links to interesting articles, > rather than links to software development projects. Originally, I did not plan to classify "reading materials" in the OIO Library. It was Karsten's idea. And, it turned out to be a very useful idea - since links to software projects and links to reading materials are both links. Why not use the same software and the same "links library" to handle both software index and other links? As you know, as of last month, the same software is used to mirror OSHCA.Org site content in the OIO Library. This seems to work well too. ... > Since the subject of project lists has come up, there are a variety of > reasons for differences in the projects listed in different sources and > the information that is kept: > > 1) Because Minoru is producing a commercial CD-ROM of open source > software, we need to be very particular about licensing details and > compliance with the open source definition. All of the lists contain > projects that are not open source, however. I don't understand how the CD-ROM product has anything to do with the links exchange or software index. For example, if I were to produce a CD-ROM that contains the OIO software, what does that have to do with the content of the OIO Library??? > 2) The Spirit software index is multilingual, so we need project > descriptions that are not going to change frequently. I fail to see the benefits of discouraging informative and up-to-date project descriptions. The OIO Library is also multi-lingual. However, facilitating and encouraging updates to the project descriptions seem to be a good thing regardless of the multi-lingual capabilities. > 3) We don't present subjective evaluations of the projects, just > statistics and links to information maintained by the project itself. The OIO Library provides "number of reads" and "number of downloads". In addition, users can submit reviews (numeric and text items). We also provide editorial comments/reviews for some projects. > 4) We have a commercial focus so the software index is designed to link > to vendor information and promotional material. The OIO Library does not have a commercial focus but we still link to vendor information and product descriptions that are of interest. Not having a commercial focus means that we don't ask the software vendors for money. > 5) We encourage projects to highlight peer reviewed articles in the > scientific literature that evaluate the clinical and cost impacts of > their approach as well as articles about reference sites. This sounds good. I don't know of any such studies or papers of this nature regarding open source software yet but a link to such article or abstract should be useful. > 6) The Spirit software index is designed to serve as a primary or > secondary download point for software source code and to hold source > code from "orphaned" projects. That sounds useful - especially if the source code can be mirrored from the primary download site automatically. When will this become available? > The subtleties are that the lists serve different needs and audiences. I don't understand what different needs and what different audiences you are referring to. I agree with Ignacio that LinuxMedNews and EuSpirit have mostly the same stuff. The major differences are in the software, not the content, as far as I can tell. Best regards, Andrew --- Andrew P. Ho, M.D. OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes www.TxOutcome.Org (Hosting OIO Library #1 and OSHCA Mirror #1)
