Re: Starting packaging VistA (Re: LSM in Geneva)
Hi Andreas,
On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 4:14 AM, Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I tried to consolidate the vista entry in the tasks file[1] and your
> packaging files. The first thing I noticed that we have two ITPs: One
> for Vista[2] and one for World-Vista[3]. Could you clarify the difference?
>
Let me give it a try,
and hopefully others can also contribute to complete a full picture.
a) VistA : was developed by Federal Employees
at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
http://www.va.gov/vista_monograph/
b) As a consequence VistA is not copyrighted,
and it is in the Public Domain.
c) Until last year, the normal way to get the source code of
VistA was to place a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request to the VA. The software that is delivered through
this mechanism is redacted. Many pieces are removed
from it, in particular: pieces pertaining to encryption, and
some modules that are subject to proprietary licenses.
d) For several years, different organizations have obtained
this FOIA versions of VistA from the VA and have
recomposed the missing parts in order to create a
full working distribution.
Examples of these organizations are:
- WorldVista (a non-profit organization)
- Medsphere (a commercial company)
- DSS Inc. (a commercial company)
e) The WorldVistA distribution has been used for many
VistA deployments, particularly one in the country of
Jordan, and a very successful one in the Oroville
Hospital in California.
http://openhealthnews.com/blogs/ramaduro/2011-11-20/oroville-vista-implementation-raises-bar
f) Although the VA has been the official development
organization for VistA, and VistA has been in the Public
Domain, the VA has lacked a mechanism for benefiting
from the improvements made to VistA outside of the VA.
In order to fix that, last year, the VA launched an organization
to create an Open Source environment for VistA, and to
create the conditions by which VistA could continue to
grow and improve, this time taking advantage of all what
is great and good from open source software practices
and open source communities.
g) This organization is called OSEHRA:
http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=2153
http://osehra.org/
One of the missions of OSEHRA is to work along with all
the other participants of the VistA ecosystem, and build a
stronger community. WorldVista has been very supportive
of OSEHRA, and has contributed a lot to the infrastructure
and steering of the organization.
BTW, I'm a member of the OSEHRA technical staff,
so, if my description sounds biased, now you know why... ;-)
h) Since multiple organizations have created distributions of
VistA we tend to list them as follows:
- VistA FOIA : The distribution coming from the VA
- WorldVista : The distribution coming from WorldVista non-profit
- vxVistA: The distribution from DSS Inc.
- OpenVista: The distribution from Medsphere.
i) There are also cousins of VistA, that have followed parallel
evolution tracks, and are much more independent than a
distribution. In particular:
- RPMS : From the US Indian Health Service (IHS)
- CHCS : From the US Department of Defense
j) One can summarize the differences by making an analogy
between VistA and a Linux distribution. There are many flavours
of Linux Distributions, and one can't really answer the question:
Which one is the "True" Linux Distribution ?
Although, I'm sure that in this list
many participants will suggest a "particular" answer... :-)
Moreover some Linux Distributions derive from others.
For example Ubuntu and Mint derive from Debian.
In a similar way, WorldVistA, OpenVistA, and vxVistA derive
from the VistA FOIA version that is released from the VA.
These derived distributions add a lot to VistA, since they
complete the parts that were removed from VistA during
the FOIA redaction process.
Some Distributions go well beyond "improvements", for
example, several of the distributions above, have been
extended in order to satisfy the requirements for passing
"Meaningful Use" certification, which is critical for the
adoption of VistA as EHR in private hospitals.
I think it will be reasonable to plan for packaging multiple VistA
distributions. In particular, I would suggest the following:
Vista Distribution Potential Debian package name
VistA FOIA vista, or vista-foia, or vista-ehr
WorldVistA worldvista, or world-vista, worldvista-ehr
vxVistA vxvista, or vx-vista
OpenVista openvista, or open-vista
In http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=541245
Bhaskar choose "worldvista-ehr" as package name for WorldVistA,
and in http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=541242
he choose "VistA", (with the uppercase/lowercase) which is indeed
the most common spelling of VistA.
BTW, when changing the name I got the impression that Debian
packages do not use uppercase in the names. Is that right ?
Looking for precedents of this type of "multiple" packaging, I would
think that this is similar to what was done at some point for gcc and
egcs. (although this gcc case was more of a fork, than a different
distribution of the same software).
> The next thing is that the Homepage in the ITP for Vista[2] from Bhaskar
> is [4] clearly contains the string "VistA". However the homepage you
> injected into the control file[5] is totally different[6] is mentioning
> OSEHRA but the terms VistA, Mumps, FIS or something like this are not on
> this page. I'd call this confusing. Any reason not to use [4] as
> homepage?
>
1) Yes, it is confusing.
This is due to the multiplicity of VistA distributions explained above.
2) My suggested solution is to create separate Debian packages
for each distribution. The packaging files will actually be very
similar (as far as "how" the package is built), and their main
differences will be the associations of homepage and upstream
team.
Once we package one of the VistA distributions,
the packaging of the others should follow very easily.
3) The control page for all the packages will probably include
Mumps and fis-gtm, since at this point this is the key package
that they all depend on.
> The description in the tasks file[1] speaks about flavours of VistA - if
> OSEHRA is such a thing this information would definitely belong to the
> description and also a reason why this flavour was choosen for
> packaging. I admit that some slight hints could be read out of your
> copyright file.
>
Agreed,
I suggest to take the points (a) to (j) from my long answer above
and add them to the description; of course after we consult with
WorldVistA, and others and reword the statements as needed
until we are all comfortable with them.
> Finally your last paragraph in the long description is:
>
> VistA is implemented in M/MUMPS, and on Linux depends on the GT.M
> compiler and database being available.
>
> That's rather metainformation which belongs into the Depends relations
> (were it just is) and not into the long description.
>
Sure,
I'm happy to modify this to make it match
Debian practices and policies.
While we converge with others in this conversation, I'll move forward
with the technical aspects of packaging the VistA FOIA, so that we
have something concrete for LSM next week.
I think we have at this point all the ingredients needed for a first draft
of the package. We should then do a tight review of the packaging
files and put them in order.
Thanks
Luis
-------------------------------------------
> Kind regards
>
> Andreas.
>
> [1] http://debian-med.debian.net/tasks/his
> (at least as long as the cron job did not fetched the data from your
> commits - otherwise have a look here in the vista section
> http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/blends/projects/med/trunk/debian-med/tasks/his?view=markup
> [2] http://bugs.debian.org/541242
> [3] http://bugs.debian.org/541245
> [4] http://worldvista.org/AboutVistA
> [5] svn://svn.debian.org/svn/debian-med/trunk/packages/vista/trunk/debian/control
> [6] http://www.osehra.org
>
> --
> http://fam-tille.de
>
>
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