This is in regards OpenEHR licensing. It's amazing how much discussion licensing can consume even without the legal profession chiming in. IT should probably come as no surprise then that many academic institutions are seeing their legal staff increase faster than other professional staff.
On Feb 21, 2007, at 7:34 AM, [email protected] wrote: > well, I think that's an overstatement. It's pretty easy to figure out > whether you are an academic institution or not - or whether you are > engaged in an academic activity. > In health care, in the united states, it's extremely difficult. The organizational structures are complex. Most of our vendors have separate licensing terms and teams for the health care enterprise and the rest of the academic enterprise. This then leaves the Medical School, where I work, in the middle of constant licensing disputes. Some vendors let us use the academic licensing offered to the rest of the University, other vendors insist we be treated as part of the clinical care provider system and not subject to academic licensing. I can find no clear pattern on how these vendors make these decisions. So my point here is that my experience with commercial software is that between the teams of lawyers working for the vendors and the teams of lawyers working for the academic institution, no one can make sense out of anyone's self crafted license, each one is disputed and negotiated. And if this is not a turn off for people without their own legal counsel or the money to fight in court, I don't know what is. The whole license thing is a nightmare from my perspective and forces me to make decisions on where I spend the institutions money. I will spend it for support first and licensing fee's as a last resort. As for intellectual content, despite the notion that this is the only way to make money in the information age, I disagree. I think one makes money by providing service. I think the world of ideas belongs firmly in the context of the creative commons. And that is where I think things like database schema's, standards specifications and in particular, archetype definitions belong. This is mostly a position taken in academic institutions and not taken in the commercial world nor in those parts of the academic institution charged with making money out of intellectual property. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
