Project 1

Well thanks to Josh we are now assigned to Ticket 1801. This is an enhancement to the OpenMRS system intended to improve handling for complex obs on the encounters list. Basically they want things like pop-up divs for images and better ways to handle these different types of information.

We are now just trying to figure out how to jump into a project that is as big as OpenMRS. I feel a little lost looking at the size of the project and the number of documents and modules you have to go through to find what you need. I'm excited about this project; it'll be fun to really get started.

All Software Should Be Free...

The documentary Revolution OS seemed to have some interesting characters with some far out ideas, but it is an interesting history on the origin and development of open source software. One of these "characters" was Richard Stallman. He believes that all software should be free. He does not thing that there is a place for proprietary software at all. Personally, this is a little far-fetched. While it would be nice if everyone was willing to share their work; it is unrealistic. Free/open source software definitely has its place, but I think that proprietary software is a good thing too.

I thought that it was also interesting that the guys in the software engineer industry were shocked that this collaborative development style worked at all. They said that everything up to that point indicated that developing software this way would not work. The concept is intriguing; people from all over working together.

OpenMRS…

Elisee and I are looking into working on the complex observation list in OpenMRS. This ticket involves displaying links to the appropriate data held in the list. We found out complex obs are any observations that do not fit in the normal obs table. This might include narrative reports, images, or sounds. Part of this will be to make a popup div that shows a preview of the picture.