[Gnumed-devel] address@hidden: Fwd: project considerations]

[Karsten Hilbert]

----- Forwarded message from Sebastian Hilbert <address@hidden> -----
> Subject: project considerations
> Date: Wednesday 20 August 2003 15:38
> From: Sebastian Hilbert <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> 
> Hi !
> 
> Ian wrote:
> >We agreed at the conference that gnumed development had proceeded a lot
> >slower than we had hoped, and that
> >it was important to expidite client development. We agreed lack of
> >proper design and a clear development plan were
> >largely responsible for this situation.
> 
> Q1: Why (if so) has the development proceeded slower than we had hoped ?
> A1: lack of manpower ? - hardly you can do anything about since none of us
>  has time to spare.
> 
> A2 : lack of new developers ? Certainly !!! Just a few minutes ago  I
> pretended to know nothing about GNUmed. If you type 'gnumed' into Google you
> will be directed to www.gnumed.org. While this is certainly most wnated it
> also causes problems. www.gnumed.org needs to be well structured and most
> important up to date. Since I maintain www.gnumed.de I know how hard it is to
> achieve this. We definetely need to correct as many errors on gnumed.org as
> possible. How can this be done ? Who has access to this site?
> Is there anyone who does not code but could maintain gnumed.org (verry
> time-consuming I suppose. Ideally this person should monitor the mailing-list
> and add information to gnumed.org whenever applicable.
> I have the feeling that many , many ideas are discussed on the list but are
> lost a few days after discussion has stopped. This especially affects people
> who join the list after the discussion is over.
> Interesting ideas, screenshots ect. should resurface on www.gnumed.org.
> 
> Every once in a while Karsten and I are contacted by companies who want to
> use/contribute to GNUmed. None of them has stayed in touch very long.
> I believe this to be due to a lack of well defined areas they can work on.
> Hopefully the will resurface once GNUmed starts getting usable.
> There seems to be quite a bit of potential, although it is almost impossible
> to use it in a timely fashion.
> 
> A3: loss of past-time developers ? There are 31 !!! developers listed on
> savannah. From what I know we have had cvs commits from 3-4 developers during
> the last few weeks. What happened ? Is it too hard to contributed to GNUmed ?
> Do we need to spell out specific, well defined projects people can work on ?
> 
> A4: resources split up to much ?
> I must admit that I contributed to this one when starting gnumed.de. The fact
> is that you guys once decided that gnumed.org is for the enduser while
> gnumed.net caters developers. I honestly do not believe this is a good idea.
> www.gnumed.org/gnumed.net should be identical. gnumed.org does have a section
> called 'Development'. This is the place where all the technical documents
> shoould go. Users often come to your site through search engines. Imagine
> google points to www.gnumed.net instead of www.gnumed.org. Do you really
> believe that a person who has never heard of gnumed before will be able to
> tell the difference between the two ? Let's sync it.
> 
> A5: Take a look at this one : State of the GnuCash project
> http://www.gnucash.org/en/state_of_the_gnucash_project.phtml
> IMHO we have very similar problems.
> 
> What can we do about this (please correct me if I am wrong) ?
> 1.) merge the websites, remove dead links
> 2.) update the documentation , I would like everyone who has not done so yet
> to document the code he/she has written. Imagine that someone looks at your
> code for the first time. Please outline any smart concepts you thought of and
> so forth. This applies to almost every individual module in GNUmed.
> We need to start writing the user manual now. IMHO this includes simple
> actions like : How do I search for a patient in GNUmed ?
> 3.) There is a roadmap out ! Let's enforce it. Please claim items
> http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/gnumed/gnumed/gnumed/client/doc/TODO/
> temporary-roadmap.txt Put the roadmap on the varoius websites !! This by
>  itself show progress.
> 
> 4.) Don't get mad at me :)
> 
> Best regards,
> Sebastian Hilbert
----- End forwarded message -----

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