Andrew po-jung Ho wrote:
>
> Hi Ignacio and everyone,
> Names, Negotiations, ... I thought we won't have to deal with all that if we
>develop under open source/content :-).
> I think it is time to put everything out in the open since we don't appear to be
>able to sort things without some external help.
...snip...
Hmmm, it would seem to me that attribution and acknowledgement of
authorship and effort are basic tenets of the open source movement.
Andrew Ho, no doubt as a result of great perseverance and dedication in
studying the often obscure Zope documentation, has managed to establish
a better (but not perfect - too many levels of folders for my liking,
and is there a master index?) catalogue of open source medical software
than Ignacio Valdes. Andrew Ho has graciously offered to syndicate his
site's content to LinuxMedNews, and has set perfectly reasonable terms
for this syndication which include retention of the title in the
relevant frame. So what is the argument? Ignacio Valdes can either
accept these terms and use Andrew's site's content, with attribution in
the form of an appropriate title, or he can maintain his own directory
of open source medical software independent of Andrew. Ignacio needs to
accept that pluralism is also at the heart of open source - if you are
not satisfied with something, you are free to try to improve on it -
either co-operatively in conjunction with the originator, but quite
often competitively in opposition to the originator. A bit like Linux
versus the various free *BSD systems. It seems that Ignacio has some
growing up to do and he needs to accept that there will inevitably be
other Web sites covering the same or similar territory as LinuxMedNews
and that some of those sites will be better than his in at least some,
and perhaps every respect.
Tim Churches
Sydney, Australia
