[kwlug-disc] Continued: OpenSource Me!]

[Dave Cramer]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 5:43 PM, unsolicited <unsolicited at swiz.ca> wrote:

> The market has always been there. I can only imagine the benefits, let
> alone cost savings, if all medical practices were on the same system.
> Just imagine if Oscar became the Microsoft Word of medical offices.
>

 That would be wonderful!

>
>  From this thread, it seems there are at least 3 basic problems:
> - the package is not easily implementable. Likely, aside from saying
> 'install', the problems include documentation and surrounding files.
> - however good or bad the actual software, the FOSS packaging,
> including surrounding bits that make a package get from programmer's
> hands to nurse's keyboard, appears to be outside of the developer's
> world view. Given it's McMaster, it carries a fair bit of credibility
> of having appropriate functionality, it's just getting it into the
> user's hands, and afterwards.

Well, unfortunately it's not executed well at all.

>
> - getting it in front of, and into, an office. Marketing. User
> acceptance, and critical mass. Changing your prime business software
> is a daunting idea in the first place - going with "What the heck's an
> Oscar?" is still a leap of faith. The poor packaging making the leap
> look farther. It needs to be plug and play, which is still a far
> fetched concept for most when everyone still thinks they have unique
> needs and requirements. This niche is application driven - hardware,
> let alone OS, becomes an issue.
>
> It's all these things that made me ask the question earlier in the
> thread: Are there any good references to this stuff? Coding is one
> thing - there are a LOT of other fiddly bits to take care of before
> code becomes a 'successful' package.


Having been around some successful packages, I would say that the biggest
thing is attention to users bugs/requests. This is something that is very
difficult for one person to do.
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