--- Jim Self <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Greg Woodhouse wrote: > >Off hand, I don't know, but members of this list do seem to have a > >tendency to "plug" GT.M (presumably because it is open source). > >Personally, I think we'd all benefit from a little more vendor > >neutrality. > > I am not a vendor and neither is GT.M. No, but Fidelity is. > I mention GT.M (and Linux and > Apache) because that > is what I use and know best I can't fault you for that. > and because GT.M on Linux is a completely > Open Source (Free) > implementation of MUMPS that can form the basis for totally free > installations of VistA > and other MUMPS based information systems and applications, including > M2Web and VMACS, I'm less impressed by this argument. First of all, "totally free" is an illusion. You may not spend money on licensing fees, but if it takes you 10 or 100 or 1,000 hours of work to install and configure the system, that is a cost. For some people, paying for a license may be a better option if they can recoup the cost in other ways (such as less time being required to install, configure and maintain the product). Second, this is really an ideological program. Open source may be a good thing (and I think it is), but is it being touted because it's the "right" way to do things or because it's the cheapest? > > At the moment, GT.M is the only Free (Open Source) MUMPS > implementation that has been > taken seriously enough by VistA developers to make VistA work on it. Perhaps so. But reason may only be that it has become something of a juggernaut -- people put their efforts into GT.M because that is where other people are putting their efforts, and they want to see the time and effort they put into it make a difference. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing. If there is no compelling technical reason to opt for an alternate product, people will likely not do so. This does not, however, imply that GT.M is technically superior (or inferior) to any of its alternatives. In a sense, it is simply the product that "won". > I believe that > MUMPS_V1 implements enough of the MUMPS standard that VistA could be > made to run on it > quite well, but that has not been done yet as far as I know. And, as I suggested above, there may be no compelling reason to do so. If I am the only developer interested in working with MUMPS_V1 and I have no reason to believe that a critical mass of developers will share a similar interest, I have no real incentive to do so. I've actually thought about inquiring into whether porting MUMPS_V1 to OS X might be an option, but I also have limited time and other things I'd rather do with the time I do have. No doubt we can all say essentially the same thing. > === Gregory Woodhouse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Design quality doesn't ensure success, but design failure can ensure failure." --Kent Beck ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
