Hi Joseph & Brian and everyone else:-) Littlefish would like to be a founder member of this alliance. May I suggest we draft a Vision Statement/ Mission Statement /Code of Conduct to reassure the wider community that we are very serious about what we are doing. eg something along the lines of: OSHA will observe neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical and humanitarian ethics and promote the right to health for all people without discrimination and irrespective of race,religion,creed or political affiliation. Members of OSHA acknowledge and respect the public's legitimate concerns regarding privacy , confidentiality and accountability. OSHA will strive to meet and surpass the public's expectations in this area. OSHA will actively promote interoperability and communication between differing systems and actively work prevent the development of vertical "knowledge silos" as they inhibit collaboration, research and health outcomes. OSHA recognises that no one company should own or monopolise "the doctors desktop" and that friendly competition as well as collaboration and standards are essential to the acceptance and continued development of health projects which serve humanity. OSHA members will come to the aid of any member who reports malevolent "cracker" security breaches eg "the ping of death" and when necessary seek to harness the resources of the wider open source "hacker " community to overcome and prevent such malevolent attacks. Anyway something along these lines and those Brian has outlined. - Comments? Cheers Chris F. Littlefish <Snip> > I see OSHA as primarily a business and professional organisation for > open source software in health care. > > It's purpose would be to gather the resources to tackle large projects. > These resources including people, expertise, and funding. > > We are moving to an era where development groups are proposing open > source products to traditional health care organisation in response to > RFPs and in direct competition with proprietary vendors. Direct > government funding of open source projects is going to happen real soon > now in some countries. > > One of the problems is that open source development groups tend to be > small and are therefor limited in their ability to tackle larger > projects by themselves. > > OSHA would be a means for these groups to form alliances and > partnerships to jointly work on these large projects. OSHA could also > provide facilities for co-ordination and common issues. > > In this way, it would be a kind of clearing house where people, > development groups, support groups, and clients can get together to do > business. > > This was the original idea when Joseph brought up the topic on this > list. > > If you are interested in being a founding member of this organization, > please contact Joseph Dal Molin at [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -Brian > >
