Saturday, January 23, 2010

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.

1 comment:

  1. Tyler, I agree with you on the point that these guys don't value proprietary software, however it is needed to create creativity and motivation. For example if you see a math formula you don't even think there might be an easier one.

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