1. Open source is not necessarily free. See the Open Source Initiative definition at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.html
2. You think that you can control volunteers? where is the accountability?
3. Open source is not de facto for either standards, interoperatibility or portability. Likewise, proprietary does not mean a lack of these two.
a) Interoperability- Code can be written in a proprietary language which conforms to interoperability standards such as SOAP, UDDI, WSDL. However, the masters of Open Source, Sun, have done little to incorporate UDDI, preferring IIOP- essentially a propietary standard (no, that’s not an oxymoron).
b) Portability- i) Take the EJB as an example of Open Source. Can you move EJB components from one EJB app server to another? Not in most cases. Vendors have plugged gaps with proprietary solutions to guarantee builds and delivery. If you want to use EJB, choose a good vendor and leverage the relationship for as long as possible. ii) You could maybe port to a new OS but why would you do that? It is a mistake to port for scaleability’s sake- it’s not a hardware problem.
4. “No single vendor owns the software… more options.”. In addition to the portability points covered, this is clearly a side swipe at Microsoft. The presumption is that as they own the software you are stuck with them. When did you last make an enterprise procurement from Microsoft? Actually, you procure through one of thousands of partners. Each compete for your business. They are the largest IT services network in the world. The failure of the one you chose to deliver can be remedied by another. MS gets license fees at the bottom of the pile, but that doesn’t mean they own you.

Yes, have the debate, but this document is based on the technology landscape a decade ago. As a Healthcare CTO, this debate is valid, but just one facet of my IT Strategy that I face long after many of the architectural issues. It is not as black and white as the premise of this paper is. I choose both open source and proprietary systems for reasons usually related to something totally different to this. All, however, are assessed on interoperability, scaleability, vendor neutrality, maturity, dev support, portability and client device independance.

The California Health Care Foundation has released Open Source Software: A Primer for Health Care Leaders by Forrester Consulting. The report is effective and thorough, and it would be good to eventually see a how to move from best of…

1) Confusion (on page 16) of Public Domain software with Freeware and Shareware
2) Identification of VistA with OpenVistA
3) No mention of WorldVistA
4) Bad link to SourceForge project for OpenVistA (better to search in projects
for “VistA”)

Still for an overview, I think that this is splitting hairs. It’s a well written paper and does a good job of accomplishing what it sets out to do without getting bogged down in the nerderiffic “free as in free beer” debate.