I am a cooperator in a not too cooperative coop. I am a traveller in understanding organizations and how they tick. A bit stuck still with some of the Stafford Beer stuff but I am sure I am not alone with that. SSM looks interesting and went to a recent Scio meeting where some synergy was discussed.
I have joined this group from a recommendation via the Solidfund group on Loomio. Primarily to find an organization which can unpick ageing software written in Delphi to make a new open source application. Its a 3D software application for ultrasound quality assurance. Kind Regards
Welcome! Not sure whether I’m the right person for the final work (I don’t yet program in Delphi), but I have a few questions that might help sign-post your request:
What’s the name of the software?
Is the original software under ownership and control of your organization? Is it vendor software? Or some other arrangement?
What sort of contract are you looking to engage in?
My sense is that the more context you can offer, the more likely people might see their own skillsets in your request, and offer support in what they are best-suited to offer
EDIT: I’m quite adept at laying out open source projects, to tee them up for future contributors. While I don’t yet work in Delphi, I’m imagining I might be able to support you in getting the original codebase into a form that would allow others to easily step in and either improve it, or start porting it to a new project. Even a port away from an old codebase would likely benefit from getting the old codebase in working order, so that parity can be more easily understood/tested. I’d be happy to offer carrying the project a short distance before passing it off to a more accomplished (and specialized) Delphi programmer
Regardless, happy to do a call and sync up! If other people here are interested to learn more, perhaps we could schedule a group call, so we use your scarce time most effectively. Either way, I could take notes during our conversation, and drop them back in this thread
I am not sure if this community can help bring about not just a software solution but open source manufacture of test tools such as phantoms. There are a user, labour, development and investor roles to make this all happen. Rory’s FairShares model might be the answer so I am looking here to see what can be done first. It might be a step too far, I just dont know at this time.
@PCoulth great to hear from you, Stafford Beer always makes me smile but I find the path is somewhat shaping itself as you walk it.
There are multistakeholder options in the co-ops, FairShares might also be an option, perhaps better yet FairShares Commons. Due to having received funding for our medical research we are looking into spinning off another company, at the moment leaning towards steward-ownership. Of course, Zebras are also worth keeping on the radar too.
When it comes to hardware, not sure if you can find a lot of advice here, but perhaps worth reaching out to people at Sensorica?
I’m unable to comment on the software part, we never worked with Delphi. However, there are many people around here who should be able to help, thanks for making a move @patcon.
Good luck!
I wrote Delphi code commercially at the employee-owned Technology Partnership for a few years in the late 1990s mainly for pharmaceutical robotic applications. I haven’t used Delphi since then, but I am still a software engineer (at Go Free Range) and so I might be able to help. Do you have/own the original proprietary source code? Or are you imagining reverse-engineering it from binaries?
Thank you for the links, I am sure they will be valuable bed time reading.
As for Stafford Beer, I am aware of other models, SSM, Complexity theory, General Systems Model but what remains special and important to me is that Stafford Beer gave so much to society in making this model accessible to all and it seems wherever I go so much effort is spent in trying to suppress or make light of it, that I think it really must be either wrong or very powerful indeed. Steven Lukes 3D power tells of that hidden power used in all sorts of ways to suppress avoiding pluralism.
The VSM is a heuristic model, building upon the science of variety, recursion and closure. Stafford Beers wealth of experience from OR and industry towers like a giant few have reached. So I am taking a punt that he might just be right. Either the VSM is some anarchist model such as that used by the occupy movement and possibly XR or it is a non hierarchical model where power is distributed where needed within the various recursive levels. I don’t know which is the answer so my contribution in some small way is to experiment. I am throwing in a idea, a patent, a peer reviewed publication to see where it could possibly go in a social experiment which has some benefit to humanity if it could work. Hope that helps
Hi James, I think any venture would have to build the software from scratch using one of the many 3D scientific tools for 3D image acquisition and processing. Geogebra and MathLab has proved useful so far but there are many others. The existing applications processes, are available to provide an understanding of what is required of a new application and the ultrasound physics is understood. Development of a new application could be staged starting for example with acquisition.
The software development is a major commitment requiring a understanding of 3D geometry and space geometry. The original software was written by a developer who was behind a patent for Pulsed Doppler and the production of the World’s first 3D ultrasound image of the foetus. I mention this not to put people off but to give some credence of what is required.
This venture cannot take off without significant funding. One source of revenue would be inspectors carrying out the quality assurance assessments. Hope that helps.
I was under the impression you were looking for someone who might be able to read and understand Delphi source code, but now I’m less sure that’s correct.
You are correct to ask the question and it is true that was my opening request on joining CoTech. I am still unsure what resources CoTech can really offer. I did expand on the request in later posts to try and explain what is needed. I think the best way to start this off would be to explore the software application and see where we go from there if you are still interested? We could use Skype?
