> Andrew Ho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, Adrian Midgley wrote: > ... > > > It is up to each of us to provide solutions that work for our own > patients > > > and situations. If collaboration makes that easier/possible, we > shall > > > embrace collaboration. In many situations, the case for open > source > > > development is just not compelling enough. > > > > Provide or acquire > > And do we need to think of compulsion? > > Adrian, > I don't like to think about compulsion. :-) What do you have in > mind? > ...
I dare say that the only reason that VistA is available as open source today is because all work funded by US federal agencies is automatically in the public domain. I think that might be what Adrian had in mind - it makes sense for all publically-funded software development to be open-sourced unless the agency concerned can show good cause why it shouldn't be i.e. make open sourcing the default option, and make agencies do significant work (like preparing detailed commercial business cases/plans) if they wish their code to remain closed. Obviously there would need to be exceptions for security reasons, but usually that would involve suppressing only a portion of the code. Most publically-funded software is never commercialised, so keeping it locked up is just churlishness, and opening it may reduce long-term maintenance costs substantially, particularly where the software code in question is at least somewhat generic or generalisable to other settings. Tim C
