Pushing it forward, The Summer of Love !

A couple of weeks ago, I definitely started using Ubuntu “officially”  on my new laptop, and I realized that it’s really SUPER-COOL . This is one of the most successful Desktop Linux distros .The reasons are so many : I was obviously tired of windows and most of my colleague coders are using Unix-based O.S. This was also one of my great goals of 2009 and it may be a reason to say “GanBei” in Chinese for those who knows . I will no more rely on Cygwin or MinGwin for coding C/C++ or Qt with Eclipse .

The are really big efforts deployed in open-source world to produce for free those SUPER-COOL tools like Linux or other tools we use in our everyday life or others used by institutions and organizations . Open-source is a kind of “green business” whose model is not understood by many people, vulnerable to failure but very remarkable for their success . There isn’t a single development on this world which is not aware of this kind of revolution . It should be the change we wish to see !

One of the greatest programs in contribution to open-sourrce is the  Google Summer of Code(TM) ,“Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 2500 successful student participants and 2500 mentors from 98 countries worldwide , all for the love of open source coding – Google “ . I am happy to be accepted again for the 2009 version of GSoC . I will be working with OpenMRS an open source medical record platform for developing countries . I will be working on the Data Synchronization feature of OpenMRS and my primary mentor Maros is also a kind of super-cool ; I met him last year in Kigali .

OpenMRS has been deployed in different african countries especially as EMR system for fighting against AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis , ” Our world continues to be ravaged by a pandemic of epic proportions, as over 40 million people are infected with or dying from HIV/AIDS — most (up to 95%) in developing countries. Prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS on this scale requires efficient information management, which is critical as HIV/AIDS care must increasingly be entrusted to less skilled providers. Whether for lack of time, developers, or money, most HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries manage their information with simple spreadsheets or small, poorly designed databases…if anything at all. To help them, we need to find a way not only to improve management tools, but also to reduce unnecessary, duplicative efforts. As a response to these challenges, Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS^®) formed in 2004 as a open source medical record system framework for developing countries — a tide which rises all ships. OpenMRS is a multi-institution, nonprofit collaborative led by Regenstrief Institute, Inc. (http://regenstrief.org), a world-renowned leader in medical informatics research, and Partners In Health (http://pih.org), a Boston-based philanthropic organization with a focus on improving the lives of underprivileged people worldwide through health care service and advocacy.     – OpenMRS “

There are many special things in this Summer of Code : I have a neighbour summer of code student, Mugisha in Kampala (Makerere University student), who is working with the same OpernMRS project, so we should even have our meet-up in East Africa . This is the fifth anniversary of Google Summer of Code, I hope we will make it the best summer of code, yet the Summer of Love, love for coding . I love coding on my Ubuntu Laptop !