[FOSS_health] OSHCA Flame war

[Wayne Wilson]

This is my last post on the current flame war about Molly being an OSHCA representitive and also a representitive of PCDOM and it's PrimaCare application.

First, I feel all too sorry for the recently recruited members of OSHCA who must live and work in a complicated world of conflicting goals and directions, all the while attempting to keep their heads above the water and making progress. You were looking for help and support and what you have discovered is that you have a tough road ahead.

OSHCA, I suspect, is fatally doomed.  On the one hand we have the 'purists' who want OSHCA to be the health care equivalent of the Open Source initiative.  They want to take the moral high ground.  They feel so strongly about this that they will stop at nothing and engage in whatever tactics they feel necessary to ensure the purity of their vision.  So be it, all of us should pay attention, but when the action becomes as intensely focused as it is here with three people 'attacking' a fourth and when all of those people have a personal history that has often not been smooth, it's clear to me that something more is happening.  I think it's clear to most of you too.

On the other hand are those best described as pragmatists, those people who understand that the world they live in is messy and they need help steering towards a saner outcome in this contentious world of open source.  The purist crowd has now realized and suggested themselves that there are two goals and wonder if OSHCA can do both.  Why wonder?  It's clear you don't want OSHCA to do both.  

This is clearly irreconciable differences.    

Don't let anyone fool you, open source is a concept and in it's short life has invoked some of the most vicious in-fighting I have ever seen.  Try following the life and times of Richard Stallman to see what I mean.

To all of you who still wish to persist with OSHCA and wish for friendly and collegial advice, I hope you persist.  I don't blame any of you if you wish to recede into the background and forsake this organization.  The intense personal attacks and endlessly erudite sounding and often erudite in themselves postings mixed with personal invective are a risk you run.   To some degree, it's the price one must pay to lay claim to 'open source'.  It won't get better in any other forum either because the issue's surrounding open source are near life and death for many of us.