> Thomas Beale wrote:
> > I have to agree with Dave here - I see it as problematic if OSHCA
> > doesn't see interoperability as a key issue. FOSS just gets you
> > applications and components. Interoperable FOSS gets you integrated,
> > componentised systems and environments. This is where the cost advantage
> > of FOSS will be shown in the future. It is worth considering the
> > ObjectWeb approach (http://www.objectweb.org).
> <http://www.objectweb.org%29.>
>
> No-one has suggested that interoperability is not an important issue for
> FOSS, although personally I don't regard it as the *only* issue. As with
I don't think anyone does. Functionality, performance, security, safety,
economic viability, maintainability etc are things we are already
interested in.
> nearly everything, there are costs as well a benefits associated with
> building interoperability into software, and these have to be weighed
> and judgements made about what to do and when, given the inevitably
> finite resources and time available to any particular project.
true, to an extent, and yet it is this kind of thinking that I think
leads too many efforts to make the default position one where
interoperability is not part of the product, but will be thought about
later. There are two problems with this. Firstly, interoperability can
really only be designed in at the beginning. Secondly, if there is no
interoperability, there is no re-use.
What I am really talking about here is not how to better design a
product, I am talking about engendering a culture of intoperability
among FOSS producers, with the aim of making sufficient interfaces, data
specifications, knowledge models etc published so that the default
decisions when building something new are:
* re-use existing components (because now I can see the APIs published
online, I can use them directly)
* only build things that are not already built (with the existing
"ecosystem" of tools and products mapped out, I can see what is missing,
what is available)
* use design approaches already in use; try to fit into available paradigms
I am advocating that a culture of re-use and interoperability be adopted
in health FOSS. A community like OSHCA could help this, in a similar way
as ObjectWeb does for middleware, by providing the informational and
collaborative framework of the software ecosystem.
- thomas
--
___________________________________________________________________________________
CTO Ocean Informatics (http://www.OceanInformatics.biz)
Research Fellow, University College London (http://www.chime.ucl.ac.uk)
Chair Architectural Review Board, openEHR (http://www.openEHR.org)
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