OpenEMR to ClearHealth migration script

OpenEMR Development
1

synseer wrote on Wednesday, August 24, 2005:

Hello,
         As I have just posted to LinuxMedNews we have finally released a migration script that can convert the main portions of an openemr database to the ClearHealth system.

          It is my hope that this will further the possiblity of a merger between our two projects. I am quite aware that some people are adamant about community driven development and see us as too controlling. I would like to work towards dispelling that illusion. As we build community around ClearHealth I hope to show that we will be as community focused as the openemr project.

           So far I have delivered two of the three things that I intended to donate to the OpenEMR community. The first was a standalone FreeB which as I understand it, is still being evaluated. The second is this migration script, which should allow people to examine the viability of the ClearHealth codebase, on thier live data. The third is a new PHP application installer. I hope that these actions demonstrate that even in the abscense of a consolidation, I am interested in collaborating with the OpenEMR community.

Regards,
Fred Trotter

2

jimbo456 wrote on Wednesday, August 24, 2005:

Is FreeB2 released in a stable version yet? If not when? Will it have UB-92 support?

3

drbowen wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

I am not sure why Fred uses the word "merger".  Usually "merger" means a comingling of resources, materials and personnel. 

Fred has released the FreeB 2.0 under open source licensing.  He has (conditionally) offered to let us join the development effort of ClearHealth.  He has offered a migration script from OpenEMR to ClearHealth.

He has not offered to start a new project comingling the code and efforts of the two groups of developers.  He clearly does not consider our developers equal partners.  He has not offered to help fix what he perceives as problems with the OpenEMR code.

He and his development staff have made a strong push towards Smarty Templates.  Our development team has committed to getting rid of SmartyTemplates as an unecessary extra layer.

ClearHealth is committed to a single benevolent ruler in a for profit business plan.  Business plans and program development, so far, are going on behind closed doors.

OpenEMR is committed to Free Open Source Development with guidance by an open committee.

Offering a migration script to his product does not sound like a merger to me.  Repeatedly claiming to be working on a merger in our development forum while only offering a migration script to ClearHealth seems to me an abuse of this forum and our goodwill.

4

synseer wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

IT is still in release candidate stage. We are using it live with ClearHealth so it is becoming more stable. We will be supporting  UB-92, but that is not implemented yet.

5

synseer wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

Dr. Bowen,
         I think we mean the same thing when we say merger. There are several ironies in your comments. First you obviously have a problem with Uversa leadership of a combined project. I can understand this fear, it is uncomfortable to loose control. But what kind of bad decisions might Uversa, or myself, make?

         We might arbitrarily insist on using a particular technology, like Smarty. This would be as tyranical as say, insisting that a technology not be used which is what the "comittee" is doing now with Smarty. You claim that Smart is an unnesscary extra layer, but ClearHealth already has a more powerful scheduling system (which OpenEMR is free to adopt) because we invested in Smarty. So while I understand your concerns, the proof is in the pudding.

         The other thing I would like to point out is that OpenEMR is not ruled by committee, it merely has a committee. If your committee where to arbitrarily move to ClearHealth now (where you are very welcome) you would have exactly the same level of authority. Please take a moment to do a trademark lookup for OpenEMR. The owener of that trademark has ultimate rights with regards to the code. Not the committee. If this committee idea is important consider getting a new trademark, as a committee and then forking the project codebase. If you try this please consider doing this with the ClearHealth codebase, we would really enjoy interfacing with a committee run version of our code.

The last and most profound irony is that you feel my release of the openemr migration script was innappropriate and an attack on the community. Yet we released it, because openemr users asked us for it. (take a look at the clearhealth forums) So what you are really asking me to do is ignore the members of the openemr community who disagree with the conclusions of the committee.

As for our "closed" development process. Please take a look at http://svn.op-en.org. As we promised we have completely opened our development process. Our ticketing system and our documentation system were already public. Many of these changes came at the request of the OpenEMR community.

Let me ask you this, if I could replicate the level of authority that the openemr committee had now in the ClearHealth project, would you be willing to abandon your codebase and move, as a committee, to the ClearHealth codebase?

Regards,
Fred Trotter

  

6

sunsetsystems wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

> The first was a standalone FreeB which as I understand it, is still being evaluated.

I’m not sure if you are referring to my evaluation of it several weeks ago, but in case you are: I did encounter and report some problems with installation and setup, and will look forward to further evaluation when (1) a new release is available, and (2) I have a client who is interested.

This is not to be in any way critical.  I believe you have made a very good first effort towards a standalone FreeB2.

– Rod (http://www.sunsetsystems.com/)

7

synseer wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

And I do not take it as criticism. :slight_smile: Your evaluation of FreeB and the problems you had with it, prompted us to take a step back and invest more in an installation system, which should make the problems you encountered go away in the next release…

Regards,
-FT

8

sunsetsystems wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

> The other thing I would like to point out is that OpenEMR is not ruled by committee, it merely has a committee.

I would say that OpenEMR is ruled by those who choose to contribute to it.  Obviously this will vary over time.

> If your committee where to arbitrarily move to ClearHealth now (where you are very welcome) you would have exactly the same level of authority.

This is a curious statement.  Are you saying that you’re offering ClearHealth source commit access to any active OpenEMR developers who choose to abandon OpenEMR?  If not, what exactly are you saying?

> Please take a moment to do a trademark lookup for OpenEMR.

OK, it appears Walt Pennington is the trademark owner.

> The owener of that trademark has ultimate rights with regards to the code. Not the committee.

I’m no lawyer, but I would think it just means he has rights to the trademark.  The code is GPL.

> If this committee idea is important consider getting a new trademark, as a committee and then forking the project codebase. If you try this please consider doing this with the ClearHealth codebase, we would really enjoy interfacing with a committee run version of our code.

Forking is generally a last resort when disagreements within a project’s development community cannot otherwise be resolved.  In other respects it is destructive.  I don’t think there are any such disagreements among the currently active OpenEMR developers.

Regarding the forking of ClearHealth, I would think a better approach is to incorporate some portions of ClearHealth into OpenEMR wherever that seems advantageous and consistent with the ideals of the contributors.

– Rod (http://www.sunsetsystems.com/)

9

synseer wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

Rod wrote:
This is a curious statement. Are you saying that you’re offering ClearHealth source commit access to any active OpenEMR developers who choose to abandon OpenEMR? If not, what exactly are you saying?
end Rod:

I was saying that the committee itself would have the same level of power over ClearHealth as it does over OpenEMR now which is to encourage the direction of development. Your question refers to the unique case of those people who are both developers and boardmembers, so the question is would the developers have svn access. And the answer is "eventually".

Currently, OpenEMR operates based on three groups with distinct powers. The committee makes general decisions about direction, and I assume, controls some resources. The developers have sourceforge cvs access and they control what code makes up OpenEMR. Walt Pennignton has official rights to the name, and could force the other groups to abandon the name (which is costly from a marketing perspective, although quite easy from a licensing standpoint).

All three of these groups operate because they trust what the other groups where doing. I would love to have the committee and the developers join the ClearHealth project, with the developers given full write access. But if the first thing the developers do with ClearHealth is to attempt to remove Smarty, well obviously that would throughly break everything.

In order for the developers to move over with write access, we would need to trust that they would not damage the code base through carelessness, or merely different design ideals. I am quite confident in at least your personal skills Rod, so I have no doubt that you would not be careless with any access granted to you. That simply leaves an understanding about where we are going. If we could very carefully agree on that, then we could move towards write access. Or we could attempt partially independant development with regular mergers (Like Linux Development)

That is why my focus has been on trying to agree on direction, and why the Smarty issue has been such a sticking point.

-FT

10

andres_paglayan wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

I think OpenEMR has a very natural meritocracy system,
those who do the most have the most heavy opinion.

My personal though is that anyone who contributed cool stuff is ok to request commit access to OpenEMR.

About the trademark, we can always, …, I better discuss this in private with the OpenEMR commitee since I think it’s a good idea,

11

sunsetsystems wrote on Thursday, August 25, 2005:

Fred, I think you’re mistaken as to the organizational structure of OpenEMR.

The only “committee” I’m aware of regarding OpenEMR are those who contribute, directly or indirectly, towards its development, and who therefore often communicate with each other informally.  Thus the committee and the developers are one and the same.

The project does not have a board of directors and so there are no "board members" either.  Perhaps you are thinking of the  nonprofit organization called Open Source Medical Software, formed by Dr. Bowen, which does have board members but which is concerned with open source medical applications in general and is not specifically affiliated with OpenEMR.

So again, there are not three groups in control, there are just the developers.  And I don’t think developers without commit access would consider themselves to have the same level of power as they do now with OpenEMR.

Regarding Smarty, I respect the fact that it’s a basic foundation for ClearHealth and that trying to remove it would be quite silly.

In the case of OpenEMR, Smarty was implemented poorly and in a way that serves only to obfuscate the code and to discourage contributions, and in my opinion a "smartectomy" is called for.

Regards,

– Rod (http://www.sunsetsystems.com/)

12

tekknogenius wrote on Friday, August 26, 2005:

For me, a transistion to ClearHealth is not in the near future, unless there is some functionality therein that forces me to do so. I’d like to evaluate it to see what the differences are (I could not of course lose any functionality, because that would not make sense). Perhaps a side by side comparison could be made between the two.

13

sankar1234 wrote on Friday, October 07, 2005:

Fred :
Is FreeB 2 released?  If yes, I would like to know the knowledge of integrating OpenEMR with Free B2.  One thing I heard about FreeB2 is that it is PhP based.  If yes,  that is better than Perl for managing and maintaining the product.

With respect to migration or merging these two open source projects,  I  can’t comment on ClearHealth as I haven’t tried installing it.  But OpenEMR codebase is very old and efforts have to made to make it more revenue friendly for a physician. 

Where can I get the installation notes ?

Thanks

Sankar
www.cvQuest.com

14

synseer wrote on Monday, October 10, 2005:

We are releasing a newer version of FreeB2 with the new ClearHealth 1.0 RC2… You should look at that. As for integration instructions, look at

http://www.op-en.org/wiki/index.php/FreeB_Documentation

for the FreeB wiki page.

As for the progress on merging, there is an informal understanding that we will talk more about that once the openEMR community has examined FreeB2.

Regards,
Fred Trotter