Re: [Gnumed-devel] Time for a major re-think in 2005 - opinions please.

[Karsten Hilbert]

> However designing a backend without taking into account the overall picture
I am always happy to hear well-argued concerns about
potential problems with the schema. I always said so.

> I'm not sure why the debate on 'Management' has to be a justification of the 
> current status quo, or a defence of the way the project currently is.
Surely because people's perceptions differ ? I would certainly
welcome less discussion *about* management in favour of actual
management *taking place*. If someone "manages" usefully I
don't think anyone will have a problem with that. As long as no
management is *happening* I'll *have* to work on GnuMed just the
way I did the last couple of years ... Simple as that ;-)

> > >I've watched a large number of talented people come enthusiastically to
> > > the project, only to melt away into cyberspace.
> >     And many were (legitimally) looking for a ready-to-use software. 
> That's not true Carlos
It is but neither you nor Carlos can know that :-))
Sebastian does know. We've been approached by many a company
and/or individual who were enthusiastic about GnuMed but went
silent immediately after understanding that they cannot drive
their practive with it *today* or sell it to customers *this
afternoon*. Truly, I don't care one whit. I always try to
write substantial responses to their inquiries stating where
we are, what they can use, how they could help. Some of those
responses can be found in the archives of this list, too.
Hardly any of them has ever had the guts to turn around and do
some useful work on GnuMed or even bother to clearly define
their needs.

> than yourself. We have had many extremely competent people who had the 
> programming skills to be involved, were involved in area's crucial to gnumed 
> (such as pathology downloding) who expressed interest, but who melted away. 
> One has to ask why, and not just try and defend the status quo.
However, I should think the answer is "lack of committment". I
don't know how this is called in Medical English but in German
we call that a lack of "Leidensdruck" (level of suffering) which
prompts a patient to act or not.

> As you correctly say yourself, gnuMed is a very ambitious project.
Only if we make it such. Why not focus on a few goals like
stated in the roadmap for 0.1 ? Those are achievable. Those do
not *require* the full implementation of Richard-space. They
allow us to put out a "useful" first version of GnuMed that is
imperfect in many things. And then it allows us to focus on
improving things. The one thing I don't think we can be sloppy
with even in 0.1 is storing data. Even if GnuMed was just a
glorified text input field for storing/displaying free text
medical record data we would still have to do the best we can
with the backend.

> And I'd repeat myself again and Karsten is the first to acknowledge this, he 
> is not a 'manager' he is a skilled back-end programmer.
To be very precise: I am not *interested* in *doing*
management no matter the area. I only manage if there's no way
around it (such as in career/life etc).

> I find it fascinating that having 
> investigated wx2.5+ some 6 months ago and moved to that myself, having 
> seen/read about its advantages, that despite advocating that on the list it 
> has been totally ignored.
Because there were sound reasons against it. Such are melting
away as time wears on. And because you did not build an
argument *for* it that I bought into.

> However a single line from Horst leads to a sudden 
> change of heart from others.
What Horst essentially said was: "< 2.4 was to get the thing
working, 2.4 was to get the thing fairly complete, 2.5 is to
get the thing Right". That combined with the technical reasons
*against* it (eg. it not being in the default distribution of
Linux) going away makes it a lot harder for me to argue against
it. I then of course have to admit that it is sane to use it.

> Anyway, I'll desist now as I fear I'm wearing out my welcome
No you are not. Keep on writing.

Karsten
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