This is an interview with Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth that talks about resource allocation in an open source environment. I am curious about how he handles and solves things because I have personally encountered similar problems and wondered about how others
solve the volunteer/anarchy vs. order/resources/damned if you do, damned if you don’t problems attendant with Free/Open Source.

For instance,

Money:

“There is the perception that anyone who’s got money should throw money at a problem, but I’ve some experience with that and it’s really not a good way for trying to solve problems. In case of release management, the people who have the most influence really are the developers. The Kernel has come around these problems and now has a really good release management, but this is because of a strong leadership.”

Developers:

“…they often don’t know what the actual experience of their code is like in Ubuntu or Fedora…”

My comments: I’ve noticed on the money issue that I’ve personally thrown some thousands of dollars and effort into perverse holes with Free/Open Source, only to have the actual problem solved by the right person at the right time for little or nothing. This seems to be hit or miss
phenomena and may be one of the frustrating aspects of open source or software in general for non-true believers. It also bodes not well for
government in that the government adds many zeros to the thousands thrown into holes. I think that leads to the weird phenomena of millions wasted, then one person or a couple of people doing it all
with no funding because they can.

On developers I think there is definitely an ‘eat your own dog food’ aspect of Free/Open Source EMR’s that should occur at all levels to show what next needs to be done. I don’t think it is a coincidence that those that make meaningful progress are often the ones that are in the clinical trenches eating the dog food in large quantities.