It can be confusing reading Fred’s blog but in case it is not clear - PatientOS is not a fork of anything, it is a unique application in every way - architecture, user interface, data model etc and workflow perspective (an older document is described here).
There are no plans to fork PatientOS (hopefully Fred will not do that despite his history as a major forker) at any time.
I am currently supporting one open source service company install the first site and I am more than happy supporting any number of small or large businesses looking to meet their clients needs. You do not need to fork the code to customize the system - all of the UI is defined in the database, there is a lot Javascript scripting to customize interactions, there is a rules engine, Mirth (which I love), and much more.
With the next release the capacity to write plugins to overhaul the UI or workflow is being added.
Ultimately people will be able to write whole modules as plugins so as not to bloat the code base and to increase integration opportunities with existing systems.
:-)
Greg |