Browsing all articles from October, 2008

Why are so many still hung up on an outdated definition of Open Source?

Posted by Martin P in Open Source

Oct
25

There remains in the world a misunderstanding of the nature of open Source Software (OSS), perpetuated within the world of radiology, even amongst those that would consider themselves to be supporters of OSS that it is, by definition, written by unpaid amateurs.

It may be true that the root of OSS and Free Software lies in a slightly-left-of-centre-give-for-the-good-of-the-world philosophy, and that is still to some extent a driving force in OSS generally, although even in the ‘traditional’ perspective of OSS, there are many motivations other than altruism – including both skills development, and skills demonstration and career development. But it is certainly true that in the last 10 years in particular, an alternative, very Capitalist and VERY credible face of OSS has matured – one in which money, and investment and return, is very much an important part of the ecology.

And to call OSS developers ‘amateurs’ is about as far wrong as one can be. In fact, many of the world’s most talented and inventive developers participate in OSS projects.

Indeed, finding succesfull OSS projects started/supported by one (or more) commercial entities would be like shooting fish in a barrel. OSS is still a small part of the overall software ecosystem (even the ‘poster child’ – Linux – is a minority shareholder), but growing. Healthcare is one area where the growth opportunity is greater than most.

But before any significant growth can be achieved, it is important to make a clear distinction between Open Source Software, and ‘amateur’ software, because the boundary can just as easily be expressed as ‘good enough or better’ vs ‘not fit for purpose’.

X-rays emitted from ordinary Scotch tape

Posted by Martin P in PACS General

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Oct
23

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Now it strikes me this might be novel enough for a patent. I hear shares in 3M recovered overnight

Which programming language(s) to use?

Posted by Martin P in Development

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Oct
16

Now that’s a question that has long since been answered on this project, and maybe sometime soon we’ll be able to banish the infamous SF “This project has not released any files”. But I can’t resist sharing a set of reviews I found quite honest:

You used Ruby to write WHAT?

You used Python to write WHAT?

You used JavaScript to write WHAT?

You used PHP to write WHAT?

You used Perl to write WHAT?

The series doesn’t include Java or C#, but lets face it – for those, there are no downsides