FOSS Community,
I am writing to let you know that Liberty Health Software
Foundation has received 501c3 status.
Dr. Valdes and I have been working on this for over two years and we are
ready to present this to the community-at-large.
The purpose of Liberty Health Software Foundation (LibertyHSF) is to improve
the delivery and science of healthcare by supporting the development and use
of Free/Libre Healthcare Software.
We are in a unique position with the organization because we want to both be
careful with how we set things up for long term sustainability, as well as
getting some critical tasks done now. I wish this email were somewhat more
organized, but as it stands it is just several lists of directions that we
want to take as well as open questions about a slew of issues. Feel free to
email me privately or call me to discuss anything that you would prefer to
remain outside the public forum. I am and will remain baised towards those
who have contributed towards our community, I will listen to everyone, but I
will act based on the opinions of those who have sacrificed for our
movement.
OPEN QUESTION?
How do we choose a BOD?
OPEN QUESTION?
We want a mix of FOSS corporate and FOSS community interests. Sometimes what
our successful FOSS companies do is in the interests of the FOSS developer
and user interests and sometimes it is not? Our community has several
non-vendor roles: deployers, which include IT specialist who deploy FOSS,
clinical users, developers and finally the consumers who have their health
data stored in FOSS systems. How do we balance community and vendor
interests?
OPEN QUESTION?
We want to include and embrace hybrid FOSS/proprietary companies like Mysis,
ECW and DSS but still acknowledge that at least part of their interests are
to support proprietary software. How do we strike a balance of encouraging
the risks that these hybrid companies are taking, but still remaining true
to the FOSS values?
Liberty HSF goal: Certification: Create a certification system compatible
with FOSS
-> Current plan: work with CCHIT to become the scholarship
organization for CCHIT certification, and to make CCHIT have a reasonable
cert option for FOSS
-> Backup plan: become an FOSS oriented CCHIT alternative
OPEN QUESTION?
How do we deal with CCHIT as an organization AND as a community of
independent thinkers?
OPEN QUESTION?
When do we decide that we need to 'fork' CCHIT and setup an alternative
certification system?
Liberty HSF goal: Vendor organization: be a FOSS EHRVA (this is what we are
talking about here)
-> Represent FOSS Vendors the way that EHRVA claims to and
HIMSS pretends it does not.
-> Lobby (in compliance with the rules for 501c3) for FOSS
vendor interests
-> Create our own definition of 'meaningful use' to through
into the mix
OPEN QUESTION?
We need to give a vehicle the FOSS vendors to express their views, as
distinct from the community. Vendor profitability is critical to our
community, we need FOSS vendors to form the backbone of our community. How
do we carve out a space for vendors specifically, while ensuring that the
overall purpose of Liberty HSF to represent every member of our community is
not damaged?
-> Community Organization: be a FOSS HIMSS
-> Create and back FOSS conferences (like DOCHS and
FOSSHEALTH)
OPEN QUESTION?
How do we run better conferences and meetings so that eventually we can
compete with HIMSS?
-> Development organization: be a FOSS RWJ
-> Fund and/or internally develop FOSS solutions that are
'orphan', the kind of projects that are not clearly profitable, but are
still useful.
-> Like documentation?
-> Like user manuals?
-> Like toolkits?
-> Like services that the community needs, like
CA services etc etc
OPEN QUESTION?
How do we tell the difference between projects that need extra development
dollars and coders, and those that are largely self-sufficient? How do we
choose what projects to support? To a great extent, this will have to be
determined by those who donate either time or money?
OPEN QUESTION?
How do we interact with other organizations like Open Health Tools and
WorldVistA?
My plan so far:
The following seems obviously true and represents 'already made' decisions.
- We need to move away from me as benevolent dictator of this
organization quickly, to establish credibility. But a full BOD should be
something that the community has input on, we should have general
nominations etc etc. So Dr. Valdes, David Whitten and I will appoint an
arbitrary interim BOD (announced soon) which will allow us to move quickly
and take our time thinking about the BOD issue long term.
- No one is going to have tons of time for this, and there need to be
sub-groupings of LibertyHSF for different purposes, sub-groups should have
latitude to take positions for LibertyHSF on particular issues. These should
take the form of small committees.
- Obvious initial groups include:
- A vendor association committee, made up of representatives of FOSS and
Hybrid vendors in order to establish strictly vendor positions. A critical
first question for this group will be how does the FOSS community define
'meaningful use'?
- A certification committee who will take over my role as chief
negotiator with CCHIT and determine when and if LibertyHSF needs to become a
certifying body.
- Conferences and Development committees are equally important, but as we
have no general funds for development yet that is a non-issue, and the
conferences are already happening without LibertyHSF so these can wait.
My short-term priorities are to create grass roots lobbying during this
politically critical time and to sort out the certification issue ASAP.
Should I have other very-short term priorities?
Long term my priorities for LibertyHSF are:
to create an formal meeting place for the vendors in the industry that
represents them towards governments,
to sponsor important development that is not particularly 'profitable'
(assuming vendors will sponsor profitable development), like documentation,
or helpful libraries.
to create a conference or series of conferences that become the central
meeting point(s) for our community
to increase between project collaboration
to educate clinicians about software freedom
to lobby in support of FOSS in healthcare
to encourage the use of FOSS in health academia
to collaboratively develop standards/position documents when no other
existing organization can/will address the issue
to apply for grants for development funds
to provide education for the implications of FOSS licensing in healthcare
to provide a trusted third party for devisive community issues
to make health databases and health data services available in a FOSS
compatible fashion, (like a FOSS drug database)
to encourage proprietary health software vendors to become hybrid or purse
FOSS software vendors
to remain neutral to particular projects but still recognizing the relevance
of a user base (i.e. no preference between Canonical and Redhat but still
recognize that GNU/Linux is more relevant than FreeDOS)
to make LibertyHSF -our- organization and not just -my- organization... to
that end:
What long term and short term priorities am I missing? What does the
community want and need from this organization?
--
Fred Trotter
http://www.fredtrotter.com
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