Conferenza al LinuxTag a Karlsruhe
7 Giugno 2002
Conferenza sui due progetti Debian interni Debian Med e Debian-Junior tenuta al LinuxTag a Karlsruhe. Il materiale completo è disponibile come sorgente MagicPoint e HTML preformattato.
Di seguito il testo completo in semplice HTML.
Debian Internal Projects
Debian Med
Free Software in Health Care
Debian-Junior
Free Operating System for Children
(page 1)
Overview
- Motivation for Debian internal projects
- Status of free software in special fields
- Why is Debian suitable for those projects?
- Technology: meta packages, menu system
- Why not just forking from Debian?
- Summary: goals of Debian internal projects
- Future
(page 2)
Motivation
- Profile of target users:
- less technical competence
- not able to install upstream programs with acceptable effort
- no interest in administration
- interest in defined subset of available free software
- need for easy usage
- defined security profile
- Other possible projects:
- multimedia
- authorities
- office
- enterprise / accounting
- education
- ???
(page 3)
Status of specialized free software
- Orphaned upstream
- Strange Licenses
- Hard to use because of lacking GUI
- Porting issues (architectures, byte order, 32 vis 64 bit)
- Data format not exchangeable
- Parallel development of the same functionality
- Used tools or back ends are not intended for those applications
(page 4)
Examples of free medical software Medical Practice
- GnuMed
→ robust, secure, portable, professional design (PostgreSQL+Python) not ready yet - FreePM
→ no professional database back end (Zope), already in production - FreeMed
→ no appropriate database back end (PHP + MySQL), development stalled - Tk Family Practice
→ self made database back end, portable (Tcl/Tk), already in production - OIO - Open Infrastructure for Outcomes
→ out-patient care, robust, flexible (Zope+PostgreSQL), only browser front end - SQL Clinic
→ psychiatric housing, PostgreSQL + Perl web interface - ... and others ...
(page 5)
Why
does the world need this
whole lot of
free
programs to manage
patient data
??
(page 6)
Reasons for variety of patient systems?
- historical reasons
- less popularity
- different technological decisions
- different Concepts
Goal of Debian Med: Integration
(page 7)
Example: Dental Practice
- OdontoLinux
→ PostgreSQL, PHP, Debian package available - LinuDent
→ Tcl/Tk, shared code with Tk Family Practice
Authors now are in touch ...
(page 8)
Microbiology
- Debian contains a number of packages to analyze DNA and protein sequences
- different state of development
- different licenses
- sometimes not DFSG compatible
- avoids wide distribution
- problems
- incompatible data formats
- problems on different hardware platforms
- different usage
Goal of Debian Med: Apply Debian standards of quality
(page 9)
Missing free software solutions
- drug database
- pharmacy
- physiotherapy
- veterinary practice
Goal of Debian Med: Supporting developers
(page 10)
Special fields
- medical imaging
- different proprietary image formats of medical devices
- licensing and patent problems
- control of medical devices
- replacements of proprietary software on non-free systems with drawbacks regarding to functionality and security
Goal of Debian Med: Indicate advantages of free software to programmers
(page 11)
Complex problems
- medical research
- powerful Applications (DHCP / VISTA)
- telepathology (ipath)
- medical record
- GEHR (OpenEHR)
- OIO
Goal of Debian Med: Demanding solid packaging
(page 12)
Documentation
- "traditional" weakness of free software
- Possibility to give contribution without high technical skills!
- Medicine HOWTO
- part of Linux Documentation Project (LDP)
- description of existing free medical software
- translation would be great
- Resmedicinae Analysis Document
- analysis of existing programs
- specification of requirements on practice management software
- only rudimentary English translation
- need for this kind of analysis documents for other fields
Goal of Debian Med: Packaging documentation and translations
(page 13)
Debian-Junior
- Goal: make Debian an OS that children of all ages will
want to use
- making it so easy that children are not afraid of
- making it so nice that they like it
- making it a playground for children experiments
- not only providing games but care for their quality
- Debian-Junior is the first internal Debian project
- Debian Med adopted ideas and techniques
Basic idea: Do not make a separate distribution but make Debian fit for special purpose instead
(page 14)
Why using Debian for this purposes?
- powerful packaging tools
- strong quality assurance
- developed by about 1000 volunteers
- support of 11 hardware architectures (auto builders: alpha, arm, hppa, i386, ia64, m68k, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, sparc)
- single developers have influence on development - they just have to do it
→ Sub Projects
(page 15)
Why Debian as platform for medicine
- stable, solid, carefully tested (BTS)
→ security - strict rules (policy)
→ reliable, clearly defined installation - variety of hardware architectures
→ universal and scalable - ability to have influence
→ independence from commercial distributor
(page 16)
Technology (1): Meta Packages
- providing meta packages
- defining dependencies
- adapted configuration for certain tasks
- collection of field specific software
- no research for available solutions necessary
- easy comparison
- documentation
- packaging and creating of relevant documentation
- translation
(page 17)
Advantages of meta packages (1)
- defining dependencies from packages for certain tasks
- user is not forced to browse the whole package list of Debian
- easy installation of specific software
- no accidental remove of necessary package, because pinned by meta package
- conflicts to incompatible packages
- apt cares for the proper installation of dependencies
- easy installation
- guarantees stable system
- low effort for administration
(page 18)
Advantages of meta packages (2)
- added value for general Debian user
- Debian policy does not forbid to install junior-games-card even if you work in an office :-)
- installing junior-coloring provides you with a desktop of easy to use painting tools
- med packages for medical office tasks (not yet packaged) could be used in any other office
Demonstration at the end of this talk.
(page 19)
Technology (2): User menus
- define a list of sub project users using debconf to manage groups like junior and med in /etc/group
- provide those users with a menu structure for their tasks
- do not bother other users with those additional menus
- provide script update-subproject to update user menus after new package installation or additions of users to those groups
- not implemented yet
- current Debian Med packages give an idea of the look and feel
(page 20)
Why not just forking from Debian?
- separate distribution would cost extra effort
- would be hardly better than Debian
- continuous work to keep base system boot-floppies etc up to date
- nearly impossible to get security fixes as fast as Debian
→ Forking would be a bad idea
- integration into Debian has advantages
- huge user base all over the world thus becoming public on the back of Debian
- secure and stable system without extra effort
- Bug Tracking System for free
- infra structure (HTTP-, FTP-, Mailserver, PKI, ...) for free
- bringing back something to Debian
- enhancing quality of packages by making them more user friendly
(page 21)
Summary: Goals of Debian Med
- integration of medical software
- apply Debian standards of quality to medical software
- supporting developers
- indicate advantages of free software to programmers
- solid packaging for huge software which is hard to install
- providing documentation and translation
(page 22)
Future
Debian-Junior- first version will be released with woody
- included in task selection list of install CD
- only first steps
- some meta packages ready
- great interest from developers and users
- first version in Woody+1
- Knoppix based Live-CD
(page 23)
Further Information
(page 24)
