0.9 at last !

Announcement of an interim release candidate in the 0.9 series

FreeMED Software Foundation announces the release of the first of the 0.9.x series of its programs. Version 0.9 follows the opensource odd/even naming scheme and as such it is a development version. We expect a production version to follow with 1.0. The 0.9 series is a dramatic change with complete separation of API and
UI functions .

When we began to do this over a year ago we felt the best UI was DOJO. We have since reconsidered and plan a move to use the Google Web Toolkit. We feel that this has more portability and development advantages in the opensource community. Currently, version 0.9 does have several alpha locations; however, we do not plan to support this current UI. We do encourage you in the community to poke at it, look at some of the enhanced functionalities and abilities of FreeMED and give us much needed feedback or help.

The good news is that upgrades from 0.8.4 --> 0.9.x series are flawless and data transitions are easily done. Despite changes in the UI this will not affect any data migrated from the 0.8 series to 0.9 series.

What is the Foundation planning? We plan, and are already working on the use of Google Web Toolkit for the UI for FreeMED. Using GWT solves several issues which we had with DOJO.

1. It is cross browser compatible and sizing and rearranging widgets is error free.
2. It has an IDE and several design interfaces
3. It has support for many of the complex UI issues which DOJO did not have on the planning board.
4. It permits the use of MAC or Windows computers as work stations

How can I help you ask? If you are a UI designer or have skills in JAVA, PHP, C variants or Perl please write to me ( directorfreemed at gmail dot com ) or to Jeff ( jeff at freemedsoftware dot org ) and let us know your specific interests.

Google Groups For Developers

We now have a Google Group open for Developers. Please contact us if you have an interest. If you wrote into our list you recently received an invitation to join the list.

Open Source Barritry

On a sad note, the reason that the German language site for FreeMED was closed for a while, was a camper on our name. This individual wanted us to shut down FreeMED or pay him. We have been using the FreeMED name since 1999 and he apparently acquired the German rights in 2003 but did not chose to defend (ask for trademark rights) until 2007. The courts have been clear that raising money in this way is not in the best interest of Trademark rights either in the United States nor in the EU. Thank you all who saw us through this very difficult time. A special thank you to Philipp Meng who has kept the site up and running.