The much-awaited conference call notes-part 1

emilykillian wrote on Tuesday, April 19, 2005:

Main points addressed include: Mission, Database design and standards, Directory tree layout, GACL, Calendar, Smarty, Patching, upgrading process, Documentation

Participants: Andres Paglayan, Rod Roark, Chad Tipton, Tekkno Genius, Emily Killian, Sam Bowen

Guiding principles:
1.It will remain 100% free software under the GNU GPL
2.We will maintain a spirit of openness, kindness and cooperation
3.We will give back to the free software community
4.We will document our changes and improvements
5.We will not hide problems
6.We will not discriminate  against persons or groups, subject to our focus on the field of medicine and we encourage the use of OpenEMR in other languages.
7.We will avoid needless complexity, to include software design, installation, maintenance and usability.
8.We will not use third-party tools without a compelling reason.
9.We want to encourage contributions from the community and will grant access to make changes in the source code based on demonstrated dependability.
10.With any change that affects the database, the contributor needs to write both a script to alter database and instructions on other things people will have to do in the form of a text file

General policy:
1.Contributors must make 1-2 meaningful contributions before they are granted full access to change code. Before that point, they should e-mail patches and code to one of the key developers for review.
2.Contributors will keep the copyright for their own contributions; however, it is recommended that they assign enforcement powers to the community.
3.The GNU GPL should be used for all licensing for consistency’s sake.
4.New additions should avoid using Smarty templating.
5.We will make the project more doctor-friendly via forms with lists and clicking, versus typing-intensive forms.
6.There will be a separate forms folder so that the main forms directory is not overpopulated with similar forms. There will be three classes of forms (those necessary for the system to work, forms that are popular and stable and other forms)
7.We will consider using Java script for selected items to spruce up usability
8.Everything should work in Firefox and we should strive to get everything to work with Internet Explorer because of that browser’s popularity.

Calendar:
1.We want to consider using ClearHealth’s calendar
2.The calendar needs to write into the database, instead of a hard drive (The same goes for scanning of documents.).

Logos:
1.We want the Pennington logos off the distribution.
2.We will use a new OpenEMR logo

New release:
1.We will have a new release this Friday (04.22.05)
2.Developers should concentrate on fixing bugs until then.
3.We will include the mission as part of new releases.

Documentation:
1.Documentation will be funneled through Emily Killian (emilykillian at charter dot net).
2.A goal is to have HTML references in OpenEMR point to corresponding points in the manual.
3.There will be a common repository for all help files.

Web site:
1.The repository will be on both Sourceforge and the project’s home page.
2.We will keep CVS at Sourceforge for now.
3.We will make oemr.org the registered domain name for the home page.
4.Dr. Bowen offered administrative access to the server and to the Postnuke Web page to Andres Paglayan, Rod Roark and Tekkno Genius.
5.Other people will be given access as the core community sees fit.
6.The repository will be kept under tighter control than the Web site.

Part 2 will be posted soon…

Any comments?