An illusion in the minds of many is that Center for Certification of Health Information Technology (CCHIT) certified EHR systems are interoperable. To many, this would be one of the major if not sole reasons for CCHIT to exist. The surprising reality is that this is something that CCHIT certification does not currently include.

AcerMed was up until recently everything that a proprietary electronic healthcare record vendor was supposed to be. Now, no one knows whether they will stay in business. GPLMedicine has the full expose on why AcerMed is just the most recent case in point. Proprietary medical software is unethical.

The important thing to note here is what did NOT matter. The AcerMed people seemed decent enough: did not matter. AcerMed was CCHIT certified: did not matter. AcerMed was recommended in the industry press and by industry experts: did not matter.

I have often been called a fool for paying for software that everybody else pirates. Suddenly, I was neither paying for software nor stealing it. I felt relieved, literally. I was no longer a fool, and I had stood my moral ground. My data was accessible and safe. My whole computer was safe, for that matter, as months went by with neither virus nor operating system crash.

Ubuntu is open source, right?

With Linux Distros taking sides, this week's announcement that Microsoft promises not to make Necessary Claims against anyone using their patented specifications adds to the confusion. At first glance, this looks like a safe passage for Mono, but as we delve in deeper, we see that not everything is legally in the clear.

In some ways Linux can be easier to manage than Windows, but security remains important. We show you how to stay safe.

Okay so I think we can all agree that proprietary software shouldn't be promoted by the FOSS community. It also seems to be acceptable to promote the use of free software applications on proprietary OSes. So why is there a problem with promoting the use of proprietary applications on free OSes?

Over Thanksgiving, I had to deal with a Windows XP laptop, belonging to a relative, that blue screened during startup. Normal startup failed, as did safe mode, safe mode with command prompt and Last Known Good.