[Gnumed-devel] GnuMed/TkFP/limits of Open Source model

[Karsten Hilbert]

Dear Mr.Shaffer,

I just read your take on the Open Source medical
practice applications:

 http://geodsoft.com/opinion/oslimits/medicine.htm

Regarding why no-one has taken off from TkFP I would like to
give you some bullet points (I am a GnuMed developer):

- TkFP *is* coded fast and dirty in a lot of ways
- TkFP ships everything in one large tarball, auxiliary database,
  Tcl and all, no real package management
- TkFP does not use a database for storage
- TkFP is tailored to the needs of not only Family Practice
  medicine (which I/we could live with) but to Alex's office
- TkFP is coded in Tcl/Tk (this is the weakest argument I have
  to admit)

We would really appreciate if you could do another assessment
of the current situation a potentially interested party faces
when trying to inform itself about GnuMed. We certainly can't
spend all day on polishing web sites but we can try to make
things better.

We do have a comprehensive requirements analysis written by
close to 15 doctors from various fields of community medicine:

 http://resmedicinae.sourceforge.net/model/analysis/index.html

Unfortunately, they only speak German and no one has been up
to the task of translating into English. We have encouraged
people to translate or better write their country specific
requirements doc many times but never got a consistent
response beyond strong interest.

Regards,

Karsten Hilbert, MD
GnuMed i18n coordinator
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