Re: [Gnumed-devel] Announcing the fork of Open Dental to create a new project: GNUdental

[Kevin]

Roberto Mello wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 07, 2007 at 08:25:00AM -0500, Kevin wrote:
> > Although the project switched away from v1.1 only some time in the past 
> > year or so, Open Dental currently depends upon version 2.0 of the .NET 
> > framework.  OD currently runs only on Windows although Dr. Sparks claims 
>
> It's inevitable, if you're a .NET user, that you will want to use the
> latest from Microsoft, with all the pre-made components that come with it.
> I work with .NET aficionados.

This is Bill's hedging strategy I guess...

> > Two days ago, I announced on his forum that I have forked OD and thereby 
> > created GD.  After I made this announcement, Dr. Sparks announced that 
> > he would be racing to "beat me to the punch."  He is strongly opposed to 
> > forking his GPL'd code.  I know that his concerns are based upon 
>
> Looks like Dr. Sparks is claiming he'll have a Linux version soon. Even
> mentions you:
>
> http://www.open-dent.com/manual/clinuxmac.html

Funny, yesterday the content of that link above looked like this:
<http://www.gnudental.org/OD-deception/www.open-dent.com/manual/clinuxmac.html>

And of course he knew that was a falsehood when he published it.  He 
changed it when I called him on it in public:
<http://freedental.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~1308.asp#5557>

...even moved that post out of the topic where I posted it (long after I 
apologized to the one doc who thought it was spam, but the time-stamp 
doesn't reflect that---it reflects the time of my original post), out of 
where it belonged, and out of where it made the most sense: the context 
of his plans for SVN (which is still not online):
<http://freedental.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~1105.asp#5554>

A True Revisionist.

He didn't want the majority of his users seeing it.  His thread "Our 
plans" (where I posted) was in his Main Forum, where most of his users 
spend their time. I can just see him now: "We can't have this!...."  So 
he moved it to his "Advanced Topics" forum to get it away from the 
majority of his users. Poor guy... He must think that he's GWB or 
something.  I wonder if he says, "nucular..." when he talks. ;-)

He's now also suppressed my voice in those forums.  Not terribly 
surprising for a guy like him.  He wants to maintain absolute control 
over everything that happens with that code.

The guy is downright scary. Somewhere in that forum (unless he's taken 
it down now) he describes how he wants to put an RFID tag on every one 
of his employees so that he can know exactly where every single one of 
them is at every moment of the day.

Here it is: http://freedental.forumco.com/topic~TOPIC_ID~284.asp

And if he takes it down now I've got a local copy so just ask me about 
it.  Quoting in part from his post:

"...A map shows which employee is where, based on who is logged in to 
each workstation. I think the sensors at each workstation would be a few 
hundred dollars each. Does anyone else want this as badly as me?

Please notice that this concept is significantly scaled back from my 
long-term goal to have realtime tracking of all employee movements which 
would be entirely passive..."

His own little police state!  :-0

How'dja like to work for a guy like that?!

He should have licensed OD as commercial software if he wanted to 
maintain that kind of control over it.

> What's the chance of having him:
>
> 1) Start using version control (git is probably not an alternative for
>    windows)
> 2) Work with you in creating a branch for Linux support
> 3) Commit to making that branch the official version for both platforms?

If you spend any time reading that forum....
<http://freedental.forumco.com>

...you'll know that there's a zero percent probability of that 
happening.  A snowball would have a better chance in Hades.

I tried working with him for two years.  Gave him money... you name it. 
He's obstinate and inexperienced which is the worst combination, so it's 
out of the question for him.

Worst of all, he's already taken down many of my posts from that forum 
(in spite of his public claims to the contrary).  Oh well, I did 
everything I could possibly do to gain his support, or even a neutral 
blessing. The man has a greedy heart and no sense of the spirit of free 
software.  So GNUdental will move on without him.

> He's most likely using Windows Forms, and support for that in Mono is
> still under heavy development.

Right.  Although with Novell's assistance, it may be doable for him (and 
thus, also for GNUdental).

So continue to write me off-list at address@hidden 
(gdATgnudentalDOTorg) if you wanna help.  I already have more than 125 
off-forum email messages from his user community in support of GD 
(they're all afraid to support me publicly because they depend on him 
for day-to-day support and they all know that he'll screw them if they 
support me publicly), and I appreciate the folks from this list who've 
already joined my team, but I welcome all additional comers.  I have 
great ambitions for GD---much greater than Dr. Sparks has for OD. I'll 
be starting a mailing list for GNUdental soon.

-Kevin