Hi Fred, Very valid approach and I think the term Liberty Software is very similar to Libre Software so it should be a nice go!
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 1:40 PM, fred trotter <fred.trot...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi, > At the behest of many of the vendors and individuals within > the community, we are now announcing the creation of the Liberty > Medical Software Foundation. > > http://libertymsf.org > > This organization will exist to be our HIMSS, our EHR vendor > association and, if needed, our CCHIT. It is intended to serve both > the needs of the FOSS vendor community, and the community of > individual developers and clinical users of FOSS EHR software. It is > intended to be a place where FOSS companies like Medsphere or > ClearHealth can sit at the same table with FOSS friendly proprietary > companies like Misys and DSS! This is intended to be a place where a > single developer from OpenEMR will be shown the same deference and > respect as the CEO of IBM. > > We cannot afford an Open Source vs. Free Software divide in > our community. That is the reason we chose the term 'Liberty' for our > name. Openness is good, but it is not enough, we need freedom. But we > cannot go around having the conversation: > "When I say Free, I do not mean what you hope it means. You hope it > means costless. In fact I plan to charge quite allot of money for this > free stuff, but you will have freedom when I am done. Of course it is > -often- true that when I say free I mean that you can just download it > off sourceforge for no cost. So I mean 'Free-as-in-freedom' and > 'free-as-in-beer' at different points in this conversation and you > are expected to keep up based on context clues." > > The vendors are going to have trouble trying to sell 'free' stuff no > matter how you cut it. Also, even if we wanted to use Open, everyone > and their dog has an organization that begins with 'Open' I can rattle > off seven without thinking hard. When we previously discussed starting > something like this using the term 'Free' people got pretty huffy. > > Liberty is the compromise. You might be paying millions for the > deployment of software that you can download from sourceforge for no > cost, and that is OK but what you need to have is 'Liberty'. I hope > everyone is as please with this compromise as I am. We will be > announcing membership and leadership shortly, but you can be assured > the usual suspects will be involved or at least invited. > > Our first project, and the reason that we are unveiling this now, is > to activate the community in support of the Health IT Public Utility > Act of 2009. > > We have created a petition that we will be submitting to generously to > congressional representatives. (Just go to our homepage) Note that we > specifically choose a petition engine that allows you to sign with > comments, and those comments will be passed along as slightly modified > petitions. Essentially this is a way for you to both sign a letter to > Congress, and also send an individual note, with LibertyMSF doing most > of the grunt work. (Note: Dr. Billings did much of the content of the > petition in his letter published here earlier) > > Most importantly, you can forward the petition to your email contacts, > or your favorite social network. If you are reading this, and you > agree with the basic principles outlined in the legislation, please > take it upon yourself to get ten people you know who are not in this > community to sign the petition. > > I want to be clear: The only thing this community has going for it > politically is being right. The profit margins of the average large > proprietary EHR vendor will always dwarf the resources of even our > largest vendors. They can always leverage their vendor lock-in to > force more and more money out of their customers. We simply cannot > compete with their lobbying dollars. We have to organize and mobilize. > We need to reach out to the larger FOSS movement. We need to get out > local Linux Users Groups or Python users group or PHP or whatever, > aware of the basic tenants of our argument. We need to reach many, > many more doctors. We need to get nurses involved. > > VistA has proven that the only way to solve the problem of healthcare > automation is through the use of collaborative development that is > only possible inside the VA with a single shared employer who owns > everything or the use of FOSS licenses outside the VA. > > Please also signup for an account on LibertyMSF.org so that we can get > ahold of you. We do not have direct access to the details of petition > signers. Please email me personally if you are interested in fomenting > a local chapter of LibertyMSF in your area or something like... > > Regards, > -FT > > -- > Fred Trotter > http://www.fredtrotter.com > > -- Regards. -------------------------- Fouad Bajwa @skBajwa Answering all your technology questions http://www.askbajwa.com http://twitter.com/fouadbajwa
