Rod wrote: > I'd have a very hard time being interested without (at least tentative) > answers to those questions up front. How can you not care if another > perfectly good organization is already dedicated to the same things?
fair enough. Answers below: Tim wrote: > There is nothing wrong with this, it just appears to me that Fred is > proposing a project neutral organization. I could not have said it better. But remember that "project neutral" does not mean the same thing as "merit neutral". Just because a project has a FOSS license does not mean that the FMSF should blindly support it. Still I would hope to do things that will benefit projects like OpenEMR. There are also things that the project focused foundations might be able to accomplish that the FMSF might have trouble with, things like narrowing in on one license in order to indemnify and protect contributing developers. This is the reason that the Apache Foundation uses only the Apache License, doing that sort of thing with several licenses becomes intractable. (Thanks for that insight Ryan) We might refer to foundations that exist to push a particular solution or license as 'Apache-foundation-style' groups; the community obviously needs such organizations and the FMSF would hope to work with these kinds of organizations. Tim wrote: > In this case the only > organization I can think of that it would be in any way in competition > with is OSHCA. I believe that FMFS and OSHCA can be complimentary. That is our hope too. One important distinction is that FMSF will be US-Based and a 501c3. Obviously, having different vehicles for different projects could be advantageous. There are several projects that *I* hope to undertake that are impossible without 501c3 status, which is why we decided to start a new group, rather than work through the committees of an existing group, which would slow us down. It is already taking way too long to get this up and going. The other thing that we will be handling differently than OSCHA is the "conflict of interest" issue regarding the outside projects of board members. Instead of making a judgment about whether an individuals secondary interest is compatible with the foundation, we can include members who have potential conflicts by creating the non-voting group of Board of Advisors. The idea is to create a space for hybrid players; like Misys or eMds, where the fact that they are not "pure" FOSS is not a problem. Also we want to able to include people like Rod Roark, David Uhlman or VistA people or OpenMRS people who have very strong ties to particular projects, in a way that competing projects will have less of a problem with. Obviously, we can also move people back and forth between the voting BoD and the non-voting BoA, so if I ever take up the role of project manager again, I would just give up my vote, and continue participating. Again, this is how *I* think this should work, but *I* will not be making the decisions about exactly what we are trying to accomplish. Once the FMSF is formed it will take its own direction, and you can count on it being different than what I am envisioning. I just want to clarify what my personal intentions were and explain my own reasons for being involved. What I want to know from the community is what do *you* think the FMSF should do? I have seen no nominations or volunteers for BOD members yet? Do not be shy.... -FT -- Fred Trotter http://www.fredtrotter.com
