Hi Tim,
You are making enough useful points to make it useful to assemble them in a
coherent,
carefully considered position.
Maybe you could work with the Jon Patrick team to assist and clarify just what
ALL the
issues are.
A discussion with Dr David Rowed of Ocean Informatics who was also is wanting
to clarify
all the archetype management issues, when I last spoke with him could also be
useful.
My position - much smarter people than me are having some difficulties working
out just
where all this is at and what we can realistically hope for in other than
geological time.
Cheers
David
----
Dr David G More MB, PhD, FACHI
Phone +61-2-9438-2851 Fax +61-2-9906-7038
Skype Username : davidgmore
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HealthIT Blog - www.aushealthit.blogspot.com
On Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:16:23 +1100, Tim Churches wrote:
> Thomas Beale wrote:
>> Clearly there will be effort involved for anyone who decides to re-orient
>> their product
in the openEHR direction. But my friendly challenge is this: if you
>> are so passionate about open source code, why are you not as passionate
>> about sharable
health data? Having an open source product with an effectively
>> proprietary data model is like having a typical commercial product, with a
>> copy of the
source code.....which is like having a typical commercial product.
>> You still can't talk to anything else. I see getting out of the proprietary
>> data format
lock-in as even more important than getting out of the closed
>> source lock-in.
>>
>
> Yes, this is an important point. A question I put to Sebastian Garde from
> Central Qld
Uni after his presentation at the Health Informatics Conference in
> Sydney in Aug 2006 on managing libraries of openEHR archetypes ("Towards a
> Repository
for Managing Archetypes for Electronic Health Records", Sebastian
> Garde, Evelyn J.S. Hovenga, Jana Gränz, Shala Foozonkhah, Sam Heard - also
> not available
online, alas) was along the following lines:
>
> Data storage in the openEHR model is controlled and enabled by archetype
> definitions, in
a manner analogous to the way in which data storage in a relational
> database is controlled and enabled by a database schema. openEHR archetype
> definitions
are documents which are subject to copyright protection - they are not
> and cannot be automatically in the public domain.
>
> Now, the openEHR Foundation presumably publishes all its archetype
> definitions under
either its "openEHR Free Commercial Use Licence" or its far more
> restrictive "openEHR Public Licence". I say presumably because the only
> statement I can
find the openEHR web site relating to this is at
> http://www.openehr.org/about_openehr/t_licensing.htm , which says:
>
> "# openEHR Public Licence (document), applying to documentary specifications,
> including
formal specifications in XML and IDL # openEHR Free Commercial Use
> Licence, applying to commercial use of specification materials "
>
> Which of these two licenses apply to the archetype definitions expressed in
> ADL
available here:
> http://my.openehr.org/wsvn/knowledge/archetypes/dev/adl/?rev=0&sc=0 or here:
http://oceaninformatics.biz/archetypes/index_en.html is not crystal clear (and
> generally it is always better if licensing arrangements are crystal clear),
> but we hope
that it is the "openEHR Free Commercial Use License", which is
> paradoxically much more liberal than the "openEHR Public License". None of
> the archetype
definitions in ADL available via the above pages carry any copyright
> assertion (not that they strictly need to), nor licensing information (which
> would be
helpful indeed). The Archetype definitions rendered as HTML pages from
> the same places carry just the copyright assertion "Copyright openEHR
> Foundation © 2006"
but no indication of how they are licensed, if at all. If no
> license, then thay are subject to the full protection provided by national
> copyright
laws, which means you can do very little with them except read them, and
> certainly can't share them with third parties. Thus explicit, clear licensing
> of
archetype definitions is needed.
>
> Why am I making a fuss and labouring these points? Because the ability to
> share medical
data, if stored in an openEHR installation, with others is completely
> dependent on having the legal rights under copyright law to also share with
> or transfer
to others the archetype definition used to store your data. Without
> such legals right, which can only be conferred by an appropriate license
> granted by the
copyright holders for the archetype definition in question, then
> openEHR locks your data in just as thoroughly as any proprietary relational
> database.
No, not quite true - openEHR may provide superior *technical* data
> interchange and interoperability characteristics, but these technical
> advantages are not
worth a jot without the corresponding *legal* rights to share
> archetype definitions.
>
> Thus, it is not just a matter of whether openEHR software
> implementations are available under open source licenses, and not just
> whether the
high-level openEHR specifications are freely available, it is also a
> question of whether the openEHR archetype definitions are freely available
> and shareable
under an appropriately "open source" license.
>
> There is nothing intrinsic in the openEHR standards or model which *forces*
> archetype
definitions to be made available in a manner which allows them to be
> freely and legally shared with others. Indeed, should one be foolish enough
> to use a
"proprietary" archetype definition, as might be provided by a vendor of
> a closed-source openEHR-based medical application, then you and your data are
> entirely
at the mercy of the copyright holder of that archetype definition.
>
> Now, I am not attempting to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about
> openEHR here.
I firmly believe that the openEHR Foundation wants to make their
> archetype definitions freely shareable. There are, however, some questions
> about exactly
which license the archetype definitions on the openEHR Foundation
> and Ocean Informatics web sites are available under - clearer labelling of
> the licensing
arrangements of each archetype definition in a comment field
> contained within the body of the archetype definition itself would help a
> lot, as I have
mentioned to Thomas and other openEHR people several times in the
> past. In addition, those wanting to get involved in openEHR work need to
> carefully read
the openEHR licenses which apply to archetype definitions which I
> reference above and decide whether these licenses are adequate. Certainly the
> "openEHR
Public Licence" is very restrictive, and the "openEHR Free Commercial
> Use Licence" does not comply with open source licensing principles because it
(inexplicably in my opinion) seeks to discriminate on the basis of fields of
> endeavour, which is an open source definition wisely forbids (see
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php ).
>
> And finally, anyone thinking about a commercial openEHR-based information
> system needs
to ask the vendor some serious questions about how the archetype
> definitions used in such systems are licensed, otherwise your data could be
> locked in
just a firmly as it is with other non-open systems systems. In other
> words, openEHR is not intrinsically anti-lock-in. Technologically it might be
> better
than other systems in that respect, but it still depends on appropriate
> licensing of the archetype definitions used in order to remove all doubts
> about data
stored in openEHR formats being shareable with others.
>
> Comments on the above are welcome - perhaps it deserves to be written up as a
> brief
formal paper? There other sociological aspects of openEHR archetype
> licensing and control which I have not discussed here, too.
>
> Tim C
>
>> Fred Trotter wrote:
>>>> For what it is worth, I would rather always
>>>> give the source code away as part of any deal, and we will certainly work
>>>> toward that
goal. But a higher priority is to make sure the company survives
>>>> obviously. So...watch this space.
>>>>
>>>> - thomas
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Thomas,
>>> Thank you this is exactly what I was looking for! I am sorry that I must be
>>> so
difficult about this. But the VistA community has been recently burned by
>>> Medsphere regarding this kind of thing. I respect your right to take your
>>> time to sort
this out. Please hurry since there are many of us might be
>>> hesitant to invest in OpenEHR until this is settled. Once we know whats in
>>> the open
source pile and whats out of it, we can more comfortably move
>>> forward. As I have made clear before I would hope that you would end up
>>> making all of
the medical software that you have available under the GPL and I
>>> applaud your releases thus far. You may feel that you are taking too much
>>> heat over
this and you are absolutley right, but with the Medsphere drama we
>>> need to be more and more careful about what commitments are made to the
>>> community from
corporations. I am very enthusiastic about both OpenEHR and Ocean
>>> Informatics.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
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