Re: [Hardhats-members] ScreenMan, Medsphere, and Open Source
Thanks Joseph, I make these contributions for the following reasons: 1) The US tax payer paid for it so it should at least be available to them. 2) I know Open Source works given the right critical mass. 3) I want to see GT.M, EsiObjects, VistA and associated packages succeed. 4) It keeps me occupied and leaves little room for boredom :-) Terry L. Wiechmann www.esitechnology.com 978-779-0257 Skype: twiechmann - Original Message - From: Joseph Dal Molin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2004 11:36 AM Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] ScreenMan, Medsphere, and Open Source Hi Terry, First off I would like to echo Kevin's message and thank you for the great thread and for your company's extremely valuable contributions to the community. For those on this list who may not know WorldVistA has been using Sourceforge for several years now, mostly to make code available...and very little for managing distributed, collaborative development. The recent discussions regarding the GUI and other suggestions to improve VistA as well as your offer below it is an ideal opportunity for us to more closely cross-index and integrate our Sourceforge and project web pages. I wish I had the MUMPS expertise to offer my help my help at a technical level. A thought I just had is to create a visual meta site hyper index or map that both catalogues and describes the relationship between WorldVistA, Esi-Objects, UC Davis', VA etc. software and documentation resources and allows the addition of other sources of code etc. The ex-DECies may remember the Golden Eggs document that was a visual guide of the kind I am thinking of. Assuming that people think this would be valuable I would be happy to manage and contribute to building this map...beginning with a simple prototype...unless of course there is a model to start from. Cheers, Joseph On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 06:11, Terry Wiechmann wrote: SourceForge does have a CVS. We have all the EsiObjects C++ (client) code out there. Over the next couple months we will be putting the core MUMPS routines out (next) as well as the class hierarchy. There should be overlap with what I'm doing at the MUMPS level and I would be more than willing to share that code and documentation with this group. It will yet again be a new learning experience and I would suggest one or two WV volunteers who know VistA get involved with me if you chose to take me up on my offer. It will give me the opportunity to learn a little about VistA kitting, structure, etc. I wished I had done this years ago. We were a small group of 3-4 who worked closely with each other. We used VSS in-house and were able to maintain version control rather easily just by coordinating with each other. However, since the developers have been scattered and a couple new volunteers have come on line, it is absolutely essential to have a common repository. With all the people involved in VistA, not having a common version control system is very scary. Terry L. Wiechmann www.esitechnology.com 978-779-0257 Skype: twiechmann - Original Message - From: Nancy Anthracite [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 10:32 PM Subject: RE: [Hardhats-members] ScreenMan, Medsphere, and Open Source I am delighted to here that your code will be available at some point. Your original email stating that it was written for MedSphere was interpreted by me to mean it was for Medsphere, and only Medsphere. Therefore, I thought what sounded like a great idea ought to be recreated for the open source community. One of the main strengths of open source as I understand it is that its use by the community helps to debug it. So if it is to be available, for now, it seems it could be put on the SourceForge WorldVistA site for people to use in a nonproduction environment to help to shake out the bugs. If we wait for everything to be perfect, it may never get out. The HUI folks released OpenVistA before it was tested out to be perfect partly in the spirit of letting the open source community help to participate in its debugging. In fact, they deliberately released it to get it out there in time for the Sacramento meeting so that process could begin. Personally, I congratulate them for it and hope that Medsphere might consider having your code released early as well. I find it most unfortunate that the VA has chosen not to use or even evaluate code submitted by you and others. It is ironic that you should mention the internationalization code as I think they could have used it in their recent effort to help with an implementation of VistA in Mexico. I don't thing the right hand knows what the left hand already has in it. I am not privy to the whole story, but from the bits and pieces I pick up, that is what I would
Re: [Hardhats-members] ScreenMan, Medsphere, and Open Source
Without sounding petty and long-winded (excuse the 12-hr time difference and the weekend), I thought I said that I assume it will be open source. My expression of surprise that it may not be is directed to Nancy's assumption which is understandable. Normally I notice that statements made like George's would also provide a reference to a link where the codes are available... Having said this and George's reply, I would be able to give feedback as to users level of acceptance of ScreenMan as the interface especially for labs and pharmacy. Rgds, Molly George Timson wrote: Dear Hardhats, I would like to respond to what I see on the Hardhats Sourceforge archive page this morning: From: Dr Molly Cheah [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 8:29 AM Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] ScreenMan Oh, I thought it will be able open source [sic] After all Medsphere uses OpenVistA. Otherwise it sounds like whats yours is mine and what is mine is mine :) Molly Nancy Anthracite wrote: So all you M programmers out there. How about an OPEN SOURCE version of this. Think you can do it? Dr. Anthracite and Dr. Cheah seem to assume that, if I write ScreenMan code for Medsphere, it will not subsequently be open-sourced. I am wondering where they got this impression. What Medsphere representative has ever written or said this? The facts are that: 1) Medsphere has contributed to the Open-source implementation of GT.M-compatible VistA code since early 2002. 2) Medsphere hosted a World VistA meeting at its offices in Orange County in August 2002, and has sent representatives to virtually every meeting the group has ever conducted. 3) Medsphere offered WorldVistA in 2002 a computer platform and software (CMS) with which to manage open-source code. The VistA community seems to have left this resource unused. 4) In December, 2002, Medsphere gave to the DVA, for free, code changes, written by me and paid for by Medsphere, to over 150 FileMan routines, which enhance FileMan's Internationalization capabilities. DVA has done nothing to disseminate this code in the intervening two years, and has made it more than clear that it will not deal with unsolicited enhancements or patches to its large corpus of parked VistA software. When the VistA community has in place a mechanism for submitting, testing, peer-reviewing, approving, and disseminating code modifications, I will be delighted to know about it. Our ability at Medsphere to support such a mechanism in-house has been hampered this year by our ongoing implementation of VistA for several hospitals in the South Central U.S. Nor do we now believe that such a code-sharing mechanism should be in the hands of one for-profit vendor like Medsphere. I would suggest that it is time for the community to put a source-code-sharing mechanism in place for the use of all parties interested in VistA (as distinct from a small group of techies who EMail code snippets amongst themselves). When that job is accomplished, be assured that Medsphere will be ready to continue contributing to the promulgation and improvement of Open-source VistA software worldwide. Yours truly, --George Timson --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
Re: [Hardhats-members] ScreenMan, Medsphere, and Open Source
George, I don't know much about CVS systems, but aren't they designed for what you are describing. And doesn't sourceforge have this built-in? I agree that VA code is likely parked by the inertia of that massive organization. Anytime we start talking about modifying the code, we are talking about divergance. I think it may well be worth it, in the name of progress. Who can step forward and get this arranged? Kevin --- George Timson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would suggest that it is time for the community to put a source-code-sharing mechanism in place for the use of all parties interested in VistA (as distinct from a small group of techies who EMail code snippets amongst themselves). When that job is accomplished, be assured that Medsphere will be ready to continue contributing to the promulgation and improvement of Open-source VistA software worldwide. Yours truly, --George Timson __ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170 Project Admins to receive an Apple iPod Mini FREE for your judgement on who ports your project to Linux PPC the best. Sponsored by IBM. Deadline: Sept. 24. Go here: http://sf.net/ppc_contest.php ___ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
