Comments on: FOSS Sin: Pointless Duplication of Effort http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/ My life and thoughts, often about FOSS in medicine Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:47:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3 By: Edward Vielmetti http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/#comment-1196 Edward Vielmetti Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:54:21 +0000 http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/#comment-1196 Code gets forked for all kinds of reasons, political, technical, social, financial, managerial. It has been this way for a long time, as long as I have been able to keep track of (late 1980s). Some people work better on their own private copy of a project so that they can change anything and everything and not have to be a part of a community. If you, as a community, build a system which has a license that allows this behavior, it's bound to happen. Code gets forked for all kinds of reasons, political, technical, social, financial, managerial. It has been this way for a long time, as long as I have been able to keep track of (late 1980s).

Some people work better on their own private copy of a project so that they can change anything and everything and not have to be a part of a community. If you, as a community, build a system which has a license that allows this behavior, it’s bound to happen.

]]> By: ftrotter http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/#comment-645 ftrotter Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:26:10 +0000 http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/#comment-645 Alan, Sorry I missed your post. It got buried with a bunch of spam. You have excellent points about ClearHealth/MirrorMed. A few thoughts: ClearHealth has a pretty strict trademark policy, as you have stated. I would like to do something more friendly with MirrorMed, but the concern would be trademark-dilution. If someone is really interested in using the MirrorMed trademark I will probably come up with a better was to handle the dilution issue. As for the development style of the various communities: OpenEMR is a very approachable community, probably the best project in that particular regard. ClearHealth and MirrorMed should open up, but from a business perspective, both companies are more interested in ensuring good products for our own customers, than working with a community that generates only infrequent patches. If you have a serious code-contribution that you feel is being overlooked, let me know and I will see what I can do. -FT Alan,
Sorry I missed your post. It got buried with a bunch of spam. You have excellent points about ClearHealth/MirrorMed. A few thoughts:

ClearHealth has a pretty strict trademark policy, as you have stated. I would like to do something more friendly with MirrorMed, but the concern would be trademark-dilution. If someone is really interested in using the MirrorMed trademark I will probably come up with a better was to handle the dilution issue.

As for the development style of the various communities: OpenEMR is a very approachable community, probably the best project in that particular regard. ClearHealth and MirrorMed should open up, but from a business perspective, both companies are more interested in ensuring good products for our own customers, than working with a community that generates only infrequent patches.

If you have a serious code-contribution that you feel is being overlooked, let me know and I will see what I can do.

-FT

]]> By: Alan Miller http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/#comment-111 Alan Miller Tue, 27 Nov 2007 20:03:41 +0000 http://www.fredtrotter.com/2007/11/27/foss-sin-pointless-duplication-of-effort/#comment-111 I was a little surprised when you started talking about Tolven and ******* (removed 4-17), because the issue of forking codebases is something I've been looking at in the past week or so and I thought you might be talking about the ClearHealth codebase. I'm part of a small IT shop serving medical practices, and it strikes me that the same criticism that you apply to ****** (removed 4-17) could easily be applied to ClearHealth/MirrorMed. The availability of code is nice, but the message that I've gotten from reading what's available is "if you're a practice, please use our software; if you're supporting practices feel free to fork our codebase and slap your own name on it." Sharing code is fine, but over time that strikes me as a recipe to grow lots of slightly-different versions unless someone (with more available time than I have) decides to fork the base and open it up wider for development by people outside the current 2-3 companies doing the bulk of the work. I know OpenEMR isn't as polished-looking, but it seems to me that it's a much more inviting environment for new developers to get involved with. I was a little surprised when you started talking about Tolven and ******* (removed 4-17), because the issue of forking codebases is something I’ve been looking at in the past week or so and I thought you might be talking about the ClearHealth codebase.

I’m part of a small IT shop serving medical practices, and it strikes me that the same criticism that you apply to ****** (removed 4-17) could easily be applied to ClearHealth/MirrorMed. The availability of code is nice, but the message that I’ve gotten from reading what’s available is “if you’re a practice, please use our software; if you’re supporting practices feel free to fork our codebase and slap your own name on it.”

Sharing code is fine, but over time that strikes me as a recipe to grow lots of slightly-different versions unless someone (with more available time than I have) decides to fork the base and open it up wider for development by people outside the current 2-3 companies doing the bulk of the work. I know OpenEMR isn’t as polished-looking, but it seems to me that it’s a much more inviting environment for new developers to get involved with.

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