Synapse EMR change of licensing

[Guest guest]

Further to the discussions on how the free emr model is not a viable

one, and my response, I am proposing the following change in licensing

....

There will be two types of licenses available for self hosted users (

ie. where are not providing an ASP service ):

Shareware - everyone understands this concept, but in brief, you are

free to download and trial this software. However, if you wish to use

it ( in your practice), you must pay a fee. Normally this fee is

fixed, and does not take into account the differences in economies

between first world countries and emerging countries. We do however

recognize this, and are fixing the monthly fee at whatever your gross

fee is for a patient follow up. So, for instance, if your average fee

in India is US$1.10 for a routine consultation, then you owe us

US$1.10 a month. If, however, you practice in the USA, and your

routine consultation fee is US$50, then you owe us US$50 a month.

Workware - in exchange for the use of Synapse EMR, we will instead

accept some micro work as payment. This work should be equivalent in

time to the time spent on a routine consultation, and should in some

way help the Synapse community. This non-exclusive list includes:

* sending in new bug reports ( with comprehensive instructions on

how to reproduce the bug )

* answering questions for assistance on this or other forums

discussing Synapse EMR

* suggesting new functionality with sufficient detail to implement it

* creating new documentation on the wiki where there are deficiencies

* creating videos on how you use Synapse and making these available

* creating templates and sharing them

* creating chronic disease views and sharing them

* creating PDF forms and sharing them

* translating existing documentation to another language

* blogging on your experience with Synapse

So, if your routine consultation takes 15 minutes, we ask for 30

seconds per day, or 15 minutes of your time per month in one of above

tasks.

The licensing will be self enforced ... ie. if a user doesn't do

either, Synapse EMR will continue to still function.

Comments? Is this model helpful to those new physicians just starting out ?

--

Graham Chiu

http://www.synapsedirect.com

Synapse-EMR - innovative electronic medical records system

[Guest guest]

Graham,

I like this model. It's similar to OpenOffice and other large open

source projects. The major difference is that the code is not open,

but as you have pointed out, REBOL is a fairly arcane language so that

may be a relatively moot point. One still has access to their own

Firebird database via SQL.

If someone develops a PDF form and contributes it to the project, or

some other software contribution, do they then give up intellectual

rights to their stuff? Would it then be owned by SynapseDirect?

Could they license it under the GPL (or similiar public license) and

just make it available to the SynapseDirect project? I see that you

are using ImageMagick and a number of other open source tools, so that

doesn't sound like it would be a problem. Maybe some special license

could be developed so the people who contribute forms or software can

continue to use their own stuff if they stop using SynapseDirect, but

SynapseDirect can still continue to use it as well if the GPL model is

not palatable.

It's interesting to see how people are using open source software to

make legitimate income. They have to be more creative, but I think

it's working for many developers. The large software companies like

Microsoft and Adobe are still operating from the model of strictly

compiled stuff, and more and more stringent measures to stop piracy (I

think freeloading is a better term - piracy implies users can " own "

the software). They still have significantly better software in many

areas, but their prices and policies will continue to drive the open

source competition.

Jerry

> Further to the discussions on how the free emr model is not a viable

> one, and my response, I am proposing the following change in licensing

> ...

>

> There will be two types of licenses available for self hosted users (

> ie. where are not providing an ASP service ):

>

> Shareware - everyone understands this concept, but in brief, you are

> free to download and trial this software. However, if you wish to use

> it ( in your practice), you must pay a fee. Normally this fee is

> fixed, and does not take into account the differences in economies

> between first world countries and emerging countries. We do however

> recognize this, and are fixing the monthly fee at whatever your gross

> fee is for a patient follow up. So, for instance, if your average fee

> in India is US$1.10 for a routine consultation, then you owe us

> US$1.10 a month. If, however, you practice in the USA, and your

> routine consultation fee is US$50, then you owe us US$50 a month.

>

> Workware - in exchange for the use of Synapse EMR, we will instead

> accept some micro work as payment. This work should be equivalent in

> time to the time spent on a routine consultation, and should in some

> way help the Synapse community. This non-exclusive list includes:

>

> * sending in new bug reports ( with comprehensive instructions on

> how to reproduce the bug )

> * answering questions for assistance on this or other forums

> discussing Synapse EMR

> * suggesting new functionality with sufficient detail to

implement it

> * creating new documentation on the wiki where there are

deficiencies

> * creating videos on how you use Synapse and making these available

> * creating templates and sharing them

> * creating chronic disease views and sharing them

> * creating PDF forms and sharing them

> * translating existing documentation to another language

> * blogging on your experience with Synapse

>

> So, if your routine consultation takes 15 minutes, we ask for 30

> seconds per day, or 15 minutes of your time per month in one of above

> tasks.

>

> The licensing will be self enforced ... ie. if a user doesn't do

> either, Synapse EMR will continue to still function.

>

> Comments? Is this model helpful to those new physicians just

starting out ?

>

> --

> Graham Chiu

> http://www.synapsedirect.com

> Synapse-EMR - innovative electronic medical records system

>

[Guest guest]

Jerry

I thought of this workware model and then after the fact, googled to

see if such a license existed.

The top link is this blog entry by Tim O'Reilly

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/08/workware_instead_of_shareware.html

where he is saying that users could pay for the software by doing a

task on Amazon's Mechanical Turk on behalf of the vendor - so not

quite the same.

As pointed out later in the comments to that blog, open source

software is essentially workware as the users work as bug finders on

behalf of the software authors. Fortunately for Synapse, we don't

seem to have an active bug list!

> If someone develops a PDF form and contributes it to the project, or

> some other software contribution, do they then give up intellectual

> rights to their stuff? Would it then be owned by SynapseDirect?

> Could they license it under the GPL (or similiar public license) and

> just make it available to the SynapseDirect project? I see that you

I think that since they are contributing this as payment for use of

Synapse EMR, then we would accept a BSD license or similar.

> It's interesting to see how people are using open source software to

> make legitimate income. They have to be more creative, but I think

> it's working for many developers. The large software companies like

> Microsoft and Adobe are still operating from the model of strictly

> compiled stuff, and more and more stringent measures to stop piracy (I

> think freeloading is a better term - piracy implies users can " own "

> the software). They still have significantly better software in many

> areas, but their prices and policies will continue to drive the open

> source competition.

>

We moving to these licences because my perception is that users equate

free software still with being somehow less value than standard

software as in your examples. This is despite the existence of Linux,

Apache etc, but most of the open source software is on the Linux

platform whereas my user base is on Win32 and not so educated

--

Graham Chiu

http://www.synapsedirect.com

Synapse-EMR - innovative electronic medical records system