Dr Adrian Midgley (In the office) wrote: > Tim Cook wrote: >> On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 14:01 +0100, Dr Adrian Midgley (In the office) >> wrote: >>> Has anyone looked at the PC-DOM source code? >>> >>> I can't find it. > >> Molly told me that you have to be a Malaysian GP to get the application >> and the source code is provided to them. > > So not the most open of Open Source licences? > > Which licence is it actually - I couldn't detect licencing information > on the site?
I think you are referring to the Primacare application for Malaysian GPs produced by the PCDOM (Primary Care Doctors Organisation of Malyasia) of which Molly Cheah is President - see http://www.pcdom.org.my/about/ - note that its registered office is the same address as that of OSHCA. I was also curious about the licensing of Primacare and so, when Molly visited Sydney in December 2006, Brendan Scott (a lawyer specialising in open source licensing - see http://www.opensourcelaw.biz ) and I took the opportunity to ask Molly about this over coffee. She confirmed that subscribers (that is, GP users) to the Primacare support programme were able to view the source code but they were not permitted to modify it or redistribute it to others. Thus, unless the licensing arrangements have changed since then, Primacare would seem to be a closed-source application built on top of open-source components. The fact that its users can view its source code does not, of course, make it an open source application. [1] The licensing arrangements of Primacare have been noted by others, previously - see http://mncc.com.my/ossig/lists/general/2006-04/msg00053.html and http://www.linuxmednews.com/1094644166/index_html Note that the GEM module, which is an extension to Primacare, as described by Jason Tan Boon Teck at the 2007 OSHCA conference in Malaysia *is* made available under an open-source license - the Mozilla Public License - see http://www.oshca.net/conferences/oshca-april-2007-conference-kuala-lumpur/OSHCA07_GEM_Boon_Teck.pdf/view (I would have given the URL to Jason's talk on the official OSHCA web server at http://www.oshca.org , instead of the experimental test server at http://www.oshca.net , but the official OSHCA web site seems to be down as I type this - at least, I can't get to it). Tim Churches
