As you are aware, the moderator of the list, Dave Scott, passed away in July. Minoru as a company and myself personally are still recovering from this loss. I took on the administration of the Openhealth list at his death.
I went on vacation in late December to an island in the indian ocean and I admit that I didn't even take my laptop! I also suffered a serious hard disk failure after my return and the backlog of e-mail messages (more than 50,000) has overloaded the automation that I had in place to manage my inbox. Spam is a serious problem that, in my opinion, now requires legislative solutions to protect our rights to association.
So, I have not yet read the openhealth list or seen the administrative requests made since December 20th. From a quick look at the archives, and from some telephone conversations with list members, it seems that this has inconvenienced some people, and for this I apologise. While it would be tempting to say that this lapse in service is just temporary, the truth is that running the list does not fit well with my other responsibilities at Minoru, with my personality, or with my career goals. It's time for me to move on and step aside.
I am pleased to announce that Bud Bruegger has agreed to manage the Openhealth list on behalf of Minoru starting next week. Bud has a long history of collaboration and work in open source health care. He is one of the founders of OSHCA and the author of the OSHCA charter. He is a partner in the Spirit project http://www.euspirit.org and has great experience in community building. I feel he can make valuable contributions to the dynamics of the group.
I'd like to respond to some specific comments from previous messages and that people have relayed to me by phone:
The first is about Minoru's commitment to the list. The Minoru business plan is to distribute integrated health care software products based on open source technology. We realised very early that we needed to nuture the creation of mature software and encourage collaboration among those interested. "Openhealth" is the brand name for those products and the list was created to provide a forum for the exchange of information between the potential customers and potential producers of this technology which we see as being one and the same group. As long as this remains our business plan, the Openhealth forum will be open for anyone interested to communicate. The Openhealth name is trademark of our company.
The second is about this concept of "replacing the list". Of course, anyone is free to create another list (with a different name) to discuss whatever topics they want. Every development project, every company in our little industry, and every organisation (OSHCA, IMIA working group, AMIA working group, etc.) has their own list(s). We would welcome announcements of related lists and initiatives, but not advertising for them, ongoing solicitation for membership, or statements that incorrectly imply Minoru or Openhealth endorsement.
Thirdy, there seem to be two types of suggestions for the list: extending the list with services to make it more accessible to a broader audience, and increasing participation in the administration and control of the list.
These concerns are exactly the motivation and opportunities of the Spirit site http://www.euspirit.org/ . There is a kind of "Spirit community" of persons interested in open source health care but not at the detailed technical level of openhealth list discussions.
The Spirit site offers, today, many of the services such as improved list software and Wiki's that have been discussed. Spirit is supported by a consortium of partners and is therefor not dependent on a single company. We would welcome additional participation in the ongoing development of the spirit site through new consortium members, or simply by volunteers. I know that Bud, our new list manager wants to more closely integrate the openhealth list with this Spirit community and that the technology is already in place to do this.
Finally, there were some comments about the transparency of the list management. In fact, we have published detailed statistics about the openhealth list and about other resources for the open source health care community. These documents are available at http://www.euspirit.org/en/deliverables.php . The Measurement and Evaluation Reports (D6v1-4) contain information on the number of members, number of active participants, and number of messages, etc. The End of Project Survey (D11) measures the impact that we, as a community, have had on the marketplace in Europe.
I thank all of you for your patience during the last few weeks, and YES, we will get caught up on the administrative requests soon.
All for now.
-Brian -- Brian Bray Minoru Development Corporation; Minoru Development SARL The home of Openhealth(tm): http://www.openhealth.com
3, rue du Colonel Moll, 75017 Paris France +33.6.8750.2465
