An open reply to Medsphere :: GPL Medicine :: The morality of licensing in medicine

An open reply to Medsphere

(1592 Reads) Posted on Sunday, December 03, 2006 - 12:00 AM
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Recently, Medsphere has released an Open Letter to Medsphere Employees about the Company's Open Source Strategy This letter seems to be the only public response from the company regarding my criticisms.

Please read on (click the title) to hear my "open letter in response".

Regards,
Fred Trotter
Dear Team:

I want to take a moment to update you about the status of our open source strategy.

While the Company's general stance on open source has been consistent over time, I recognize that this has been a matter of confusion for some people in recent months.

The reason people are confused is because the Medsphere position has not been consistent. If the Medsphere position had been consistent then there would be no confusion.

Because VistA's source code was developed by the U.S. government it is in the public domain and is, thus, a special type of open source product, albeit differing in notable ways from traditional open source software.

Yes with a normal FOSS project, covered by the GPL, there is no way you could get away with this kind of thing. Your actions are an object lesson in the value of keep-it-free software.

It always has been the expectation of Medsphere's management, the Company's board of directors, and its investors that Medsphere would work with the VistA community to improve VistA by releasing enhancements to the VistA source code under an open source license. In this vein, in late 2004, Medsphere released open source enhancements to the Fileman component of VistA.

I think you mean late 2005. Medsphere deserves applause for supporting George Timsons work on Fileman. It should be noted that Timson resigned from Medsphere on 06/28/2006, exactly two days after Medsphere filed suit against Scott and Steve Shreeve.

While committed to promoting open source improvements to VistA, it also has always been the position of Medsphere's management, Board and investors that Medsphere would not release 100% of its code under an open source license.

This is obviously not true. In every conversation I have ever had with Steve Shreeve both before and after this blowup he has indicated that he intended to do a FOSS release. Steve was once the CEO of Medsphere, and is currently on the board. This is your current position, and nothing more.

In fact, in order to deliver certain features required by our customers, Medsphere includes some code in its commercial product that the Company does not have the right to release as open source.

This is totally irrelevant. If you own the copyright, you can release the sourcecode. If you do not own the copyright then you cannot release the code, and no one expects you to. This is like saying that Medsphere cannot be open source improvements to the CPRS client because the CPRS client runs on Windows and Medsphere cannot release the sourcecode to Windows.

In addition, Medsphere's business model has always included the idea that the Company would offer commercial, proprietary extensions on top of the open source code base.

Having been with Medsphere since its earliest days, I can attest to the above being the Company's stance since the beginning. And this strategy has been espoused by representatives of the Company in various public statements. For example, former CEO Larry Augustin articulated this strategy in an interview with CNET that was published in August 2005. To quote that article:

"It is our intention to build an open-source project around the core of that public domain code," Augustin said in an interview. However, the company also plans to sell proprietary software modules - for example, the original VA code can't handle billing, so Medsphere plans to build an extension to handle that, Augustin said. "Right now that stuff is not open source."

This is interesting. First it is important to note that it was this quote that originally caused me to contact your company for clarification. Second this is totally against what you are actually doing now. You have not released an "open source project around the core of that public domain code" or rather, you have but you have taken it back and you are now suing the people who did it for you. Please correct me if I am wrong, but Scott and Steve did not release your billing system.

Over all you are choosing selective quotes regarding Medspheres strategy. There are other public statements (like the ones you made to me) that indicated different strategies. Even if you pretend that this quote totally sums up the Medsphere open source strategy, you are still out of line for suing the Shreeves.

I regret any confusion that may have arisen regarding Medsphere's open source strategy.

Apparently, this regret is not strong enough to stop you from suing the founders of Medsphere, who are apparently being sued for 50 Million because they were "confused".

To make sure that our position is clear in the future, we have been actively working for the past few months to develop a formal open source policy. We have engaged consultants and attorneys specializing in the emerging open source arena to assist us in formulating our policy and selecting licenses that will meet our business objectives.

Sounds great. Unfortunately when the Shreeves released the code you had not done this. So releasing such a policy now is equivalent to saying "This is what we wish we had said when you first asked us what our position was. Please ignore what we actually said and accept this as our position retro-actively."

I am pleased to report that we have now developed a candidate position statement, along with a set of recommendations and an implementation plan, which we will be reviewing with the Board of Directors in the near future.

Have you considered including the community in this process? I am quite sure that WorldVistA would be willing to provide you a forum to discuss this issue. I continue to find it surprising that the only person who understands how to code in MUMPS on your board of directors is Steve Shreeve. Will Steve be included in the decision making process for this policy statement? A policy which merely "meets your business objectives" and fails to respect the values and culture of the community will ensure that you are alone in working towards your goal. If you business model relies on the community to provide software development for you, then I would consider including them in your decisions, especially since this decision is basically "How much will be contributing back into the community?"

We hope to roll out our formally adopted open source policy and strategy before the end of the year. I will be sending out further notices in this regard as things evolve.

I hope that "evolve" might mean "change strategy".

Please do not hesitate to ask if you have questions about our open source strategy.

If you are a Medsphere employee and you will ask the following question to Ken Kizer I will get you a LinuxMedNews T-shirt signed by Ignacio Valdes!

"Since you admit that there has been 'confusion' regarding our open source strategy, why are we suing the Shreeves for violating that strategy?"

We understand that we are pioneering a new business model and a new enterprise and that there are likely to be questions and some controversy as we traverse this uncharted territory.

Looking at Medsphere as pioneers is so ironic. The underground railround were pioneers. The built VistA and then proved that it could run the largest hospital system in the world. You are not even the first group to run a private hospital on VistA. You are not a "exploring" you are "capitalizing", which is fine.

However you are correct that there will be controversy around the path that you are taking. The reason there will be controversy is that what you are doing to the Shreeves and to the community is wrong.

Regards,
Fred Trotter

GPL Medicine

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An open reply to Medsphere