I was recently reminded of the quote that so often is (mis)attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:
Without getting religious, I believe and hope OpenMRS follows this dictum: spend more time & effort improving health in resource poor environments than we spend talking about it. And, for OpenMRS, we choose to do our work openly. Why? Because “Open Source” is not so much about sharing code as it is about sharing experiences, teaching & learning from each other, and embracing collaboration & open methodologies… in short, open behavior. It took a while to learn that distinction. Now when I hear people fussing over code, it feels petty. One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned from the OpenMRS Community:
We could switch to a completely different programming language or a new shiny platform could (and likely will) come along some day that’s far better than what we’ve done. All of our precious code will fade away. That’s fine. As long as we have our people. Are you running a development shop? Have you calculated how much you’ve invested in your “product” and found yourself thinking about the code? Wrong. Your investment is in people. Give me the choice between good code and a good coder and I will take the coder 100 times out of 100. In the end, code is just a tool… property. And property can be replaced. Love your coders. Treat them well and invest in them. Life will be good. And while you’re doing that, consider working openly.