Debian-Med - Standard questions
Brave GNU World standard questions:
-----------------------------------
INTRODUCTION:
These are the standard questions for the Brave GNU World column that
can be found online at http://brave-gnu-world.org.
It has become customary to fill out these questions and mail them
back to <column@gnu.org> in order to give me a good
feeling/impression about a project. This also applies to
non-technical projects, btw.
Please feel free to be as verbose as you want as more information
will allow me to gain a more complete picture which I can then use to
write a more complete feature.
QUESTIONS:
* What is it?
Debian-Med is an Debian internal project to support tasks of people
in medical care. The goal of Debian-Med is a complete system for
all tasks in medical care which is build completely on free
software.
More complete:
En: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/index.en.html#description
De: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/index.de.html#description
What is it not?
It is no separate project from Debian. We just want to simplify
to pick out the relevant bits from Debian an make the whole Debian
project fit better into the needs of users in the field of medicine.
* Who would use it?
Doctors in practice and clinics
Researchers in the field of medicine and microbiology
Any other people dealing with medical care
* Why would they use it instead of similar projects?
To my knowledge there is no comparable project to make a unific and
comprehensive system from free medical software.
* (Programming) language used in this project?
Several. This is a Meta project which includes all kind of
free software in the field of health care and so all possible
languages can be found here.
* Special features/strengths?
There is a lot of free medical software in the world but there is
no unique platform for easy installation and administration which
is a big need for users in medicine. Debian-Med tries to JOIN
FORCES of free software developers to come together and make the
best out of there software projects. More complete:
En: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/index.en.html#goals
De: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/index.de.html#goals
* Special problems?
The main properties we want to address are:
- Privacy of data (which needs Open SOurce in our opinion)
- Confidentiality
- Security
- Ease of use (perhaps often a main lack in free software but
some projects are developed by doctors who use their own
software and so they have a strong need for caring about best
usability).
- Ease of installation / administration
* Who is working on it?
Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org> started the project in the
beginning of this year.
He gets support from about 70 members of a (unfortunately) low
traffic mailing list, software authors who are interested to
include their software into Debian and from Debian developers who
take over the job of packaging or help upstream authors to package
themselves.
* History of the project?
Perhaps to young to have a real history.
* Plans for the close and distant future?
Close: Getting at least one free software package for every
task packaged.
Distant: Show people working in the field of medicine a free
alternative to their commercial software which is used in
a wide range.
Get the project really grow up from its current childhood.
Some kind of Live CD or something like that (based on Knoppix)
* Do you need help? If so: of what kind?
We need help for documentation and translation.
We need a logo (have some kind of Debian-Swirl + Snake in my mind).
* Interesting/fun stories that might juice up the story?
Not a real story but I was very surprised that I've got much
response after my first slight announcement in January this year
from all over the world including invitations for visits / talks
all over the world. I hope I could follow all these invitations
once the project has some really impressing features.
* Website/FTP addresses?
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/
(If browser language is set correctly it automatically shows German
pages. if not the direct link to the German version is
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/index.de.html)
* License?!
According to the single software project. One goal is to convince
authors to choose DFSG free software and we prefer those licenses.
On the other hand we also support those software which is called
non-free inside Debian. (This does not mean that you have to pay
money for it. Many software authors consider their license free
but they are not compliant with the DFSG.)
* Standard documents to read in this context?
None.
* Anything you would like to see mentioned?
Nothing special.
* Answer to a question I forgot?
I do not think that you forgot anything. :)
> NOTE:
> Everything you want me to read should be sent to me by
> mail because very often I will take my mail with me and
> read it where I don't have access to the net.
If there are any open questions feel free to ask me to make a tarball
from the most relevant information from English and German websites.
I just thought that it might help to point you to the websites to save
some time for translation and thus I added the links.
Kind Regards
Andreas.
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