Based on recent postings perhaps I am wrong in using the term "incorporation" for ressurrecting OSHCA and making it a legal entity. I can understand the fear of business-minded individuals. I would from now on use the word "registration". I would like to re-post the Vision, Mission, Principles and Activities as discussed in this mailing list.
*Open Source Health Care Alliance (OSHCA)* The Open Source Health Care Alliance is a non-profit organisation that provides the collaborative platform and forum to promote and facilitate open source software in health care. OSHCA's membership consists of a community of people in the health care and informatics industries that promotes the open source software concept in health care. OSHCA helps policy makers, commercial enterprises, and users take advantage of the benefits of open source. * Vision:* Free and Open Source Health Care Software will provide a viable and sustainable alternative in mainstream ICT for positive impact in health outcomes as adjunct to building a global knowledge society. * Mission:* 1. Advocacy role to promote to policy makers the concept of open source in health care so as to adopt or give equal opportunity to open source solutions 2. Provide leadership role in refining the FOSS concepts as applied to health care to ensure best practices and patient safety are not compromised 3. Makes recommendations on Guidelines on Health Information Standards to support open data (data interchange and data language) standards and strongly advocating adherence to them 4. Provides Guidelines for Quality Control on open source software development 5. Participates / supports in Human Capacity Building, including contributing and participating in project proposals and project management to achieve developing country priorities 6. Collaborates, shares technical knowledge in open source health care projects in addition to providing Information Resources to open source health software developers 7. Promotes and helps the formation of development consortia for health care related projects, including assisting in finding funding for projects to reach critical mass for a visible and lasting impact on health related MDGs 8. Solicits membership from strategic organizations *Principles* / 1. Promote a globally sustainable approach/ Open source software development encourages global collaboration. OSHCA will encourage approaches that seek active participation by users, developers, and policy makers from all parts of the world. / 2. Stay lightweight and flexible/ In the spirit of open source where development is user and needs driven, facilitation needs to support highly desirable dynamism, adaptability, and flexibility. This approach seeks to facilitate natural processes that produce unprecedented quality, usability, and cost effectiveness. / 3. Be open to diverse opinions and technologies/ OSHCA is inclusive of all health care-related open source activities. In an open source world, the success of an idea, standard, or product is measured by its practical use. / 4. Ethical Deployment/ OSHCA's focus is the legal and ethical deployment of reliable and robust open source systems in all areas of health care. This means taking leadership role to ensure standards are maintained and working with legislative and standards bodies to encourage the inclusion of open source principals in their policies *Activities* 1. OSHCA Conference 2. Maintain OSHCA web-portal 3. Maintain database of open source health care softwares 4. Maintain database of open source programmers 5. Maintain database of individuals, non-profits and commercial enterprises supporting and maintaining open source health care softwares 6. Form groups on developing guidelines on health information standards, quality control on open source software development, etc Molly Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/openhealth/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/