Re: Open Source Developer (Economics)

on Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 01:11:05PM -0500, Robin 'Roblimo' Miller ([email protected]) wrote:
> >
> >
> >The discussion I wish to initiate is based on various published
> >reports that indicate the lack of OSS with respect to "business
> >critical" or "Mission Critical" software that can effectively compete
> >with SAP, ORACLE finance, ORACLE HR, SIEBEL,  to name a few examples.

> Actually, the seeds of such software exist in the form of VistA, the set 
> of hospital and clinical management software tools a small group of IT 
> people inside the Veterans Administration started developing way back in 
> the 1970s, based on a system whose development started at Massachusetts 
> General Hospital in the 1960s, that now runs all 170 VA hospitals and 
> quite a few others in Europe. See http://www.va.gov/vdl/ to learn more.

Interesting.

A number of notable proprietary software products have their roots in
research or government projects.  A tool I use (SAS) traces to both --
it was a tool developed at University of North Carolina, and was
initially deployed by the USDA.  In the field of healthcare, there is a
company called PHAMIS, based out of Seattle last I checked, whose
origins and name come from the (IIRC) Public Health Administration
Management Information System.  Oracle was originally a project of the
US intelligence community.

This is a fairly common development funding & bootstrap mechanism.  It's
own FSBs should exploit where possible.  Going to the original (and, if
developed by US Federal government agencies, but _not_ contractors,
public domain) sources if possible.

Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <[email protected]>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
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