[Asterisk-Users] Re: Advice on OS Choice

[Kevin Walsh]

Joe Greco [jgreco at ns.sol.net] wrote:
> > Your scenario can be played out any number of ways, with or without
> > source. You routinely send your life critical hardware down to Bob and
> > Doug's repair shop?  You have bigger issues in place.
> >
> What are we talking about "Bob and Doug's repair shop" for?
>
> I'm talking about a manufacturer who sells medical monitoring equipment to
> a major hospital campus.  The campus WILL and DOES have its own
> electronics shop, with technicians who know the business end of a
> soldering iron, and frequently people who are damn sharp with computers
> as well, because they are almost always burdened with the complexities of
> fixing and maintaining a weird custom mishmash of equipment and networks
> required by their employer. 
>
You really are tying yourself into knots here.  If the hospital trusts
its staff to mess about inside their expensive and critical medical
equipment with a soldering iron, then the technical staff will hopefully
have been provided with detailed schematics and training, and will
hopefully have some idea of what they think they're doing.

There's probably more of a risk of these people messing up the hardware
than of them finding the time to port GNU/Linux onto a kidney dialysis
machine, or modifying a heart monitor to double-up as an Asterisk server.

If some Muppet thinks it'd be cool to insert a patient into a CT scanner
that's been modified to run Tux Racer, then the blame for any negative
results will have to lie squarely with the hospital and/or the
individuals concerned.  Surely the hospital would be required to get
all hardware or software modifications thoroughly tested and officially
certified before handing the equipment over to Dr. Mengele for human
trials anyway.

Distributing the source would allow peer review;  The hospital staff,
and other interested parties, could point out potential bugs, suggest
possible enhancements and even provide patches for consideration that
could turn out to be of benefit to healthcare in the future.

You obviously have other reasons why you think that free and open source
software is such a bad idea, and are frantically trying to "think" up
reasons to support your cause.  It's not working.

Please purchase a clue before attempting to post a reply to this article.

-- 
   _/   _/  _/_/_/_/  _/    _/  _/_/_/  _/    _/
  _/_/_/   _/_/      _/    _/    _/    _/_/  _/   K e v i n   W a l s h
 _/ _/    _/          _/ _/     _/    _/  _/_/    kevin at cursor.biz
_/   _/  _/_/_/_/      _/    _/_/_/  _/    _/