Hi Sam, Nice to talk to you again.
On Mon, 2008-02-25 at 16:09 +0000, sickleofzeus wrote: > Dear Tim, > > We are listening and I am definitely reading your comments. You have > very good thoughts and are contributing to this discussion in a very > thoughtful manner (as is usual for you). I apologize if my comments > here seem antagonistic. That is not my intention. I am not trying to > tear this idea down but rather add fuel for thought in the formative > phases. > I do not think that your comments have been destructive though I am disheartened to see you and Fred in this argument. Let's all face it. While we all have different points of view we must realize that we are minuscule in the world of health informatics. > I for one agree with you that this is a much needed project to pull > this already much divided community back together. To have one > organizations vigorously promoting FOSS solutions will be good for all > of us. > EXCELLENT! > I am not sure which acronym precipitated the ugly mail that you > received. I will not try to not repeat it here. I believe in transparency. It was FMSF. > > The reason I have bring up these issues is because I believe > conflict-of-interest is one of the factors that has contributed to our > current state. ... and this is one of the reasons that an independent organization is important. > For this type of organization to do well all of the > projects need to respect the new organization. The appearance of > conflict-of-interest can be just as bad as the real thing precisely > because of the way we communicate in these forums. Very true. > > I agree that board members should be allowed to participate in "paid > or unpaid projects" with the caveat that conflict-of-interest and the > appearance of conflict-of-interest should be avoided. I have emailed > the documents that I created for OSMS to Fred Trotter and these have > been forwarded to Ignacio Valdez. These documents were created under > the Gnu Free Document License and are freely copyable to be used as > desired. If you wish, I can include them here. While they may be important to some; I believe that they are obvious to many. > > I have an advantage in that I have already formed a not-for-profit > corporation and have some experience in this area. Getting the > 501(c)(3) designation is not easy and takes a long time. This is VERY true (been there, done that). I personally admire your persistence in this accomplishment. > > The Board-of-Directors should if at all possible include a accountant > and an attorney. There are many legal and tax issues that come up and > having these professionals on the board are invaluable. I agree. In fact I personally recommended a well known IP attorney in this area. As I hope that I pointed out in my earlier emails. Developers and document creators are not the core of an open source (FOSS healthcare) application. They are VERY important but the reality is that funding agencies must be convinced. This takes technical analysis and evaluation of the entire healthcare context. Sincerely, Tim [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
