Hi, under http://linuxmednews.com/linuxmednews/1098376300/index_html a new realease of FreeMED is announced. While FreeMED is also a target for Debian-Med I think the even more interesting part of this message is the billing system REMITT. In the past I tried to help out Jeff Buchbinder to enhance the quality of FreeB which was either an alternative billing system or just the predecessor of Remitt - unfortunately I was not able to find any documentation about the relation of FreeB and REMITT. The current status of FreeB from a Debian point of view is the following: 1. I offered Jeff to sponsor his FreeB packages which means he is the maintainer of the package (which is an optimal situation to have one of the upstream developers as maintainers) and I would care for the upload. 2. I did some patches to his packaging stuff which are available at http://people.debian.org/~tille/packages/freeb/ in August this year but Jeff did not reacted until today what he thinks about these patches and whether we should do the upload. (I would love to hear his OK even if it is free software but it is kind of normal politeness to ask for it.) The further plan for FreeMed is the following: Check the Debian packages which are provided by the FreeMed people and migrate them step by steep to the Debian mirror. In April this year did some analysis on the Debian packages which are provided by the FreeMed people (thanks for this service) at http://apt.freemedsoftware.com/ which might be a little bit outdated now, but not really wrong in principle: 1. djview: ~> apt-cache policy djview djview: Installed: (none) Candidate: 3.5.12-5 Version Table: 3.5.12-5 0 499 http://debian.tu-bs.de testing/main Packages 50 http://debian.tu-bs.de unstable/main Packages --> This is available in Debian and can be removed once Sarge is out 2. freeb -> I think the necessary work is done (see http://people.debian.org/~tille/packages/freeb/ ) 3. freemed and freemed_modules -> Polishing this package would be the final step 4. libbit-vector-perl This is not yet contained in Debian. Somebody should step in here and file a RFP bug to wnpp in the way it is described at http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/#l1 This should include a link to the packages at apt.freemedsoftware.com. If no developer steps in ask for anybody who might sponsor your package to get it propagated to the official Debian mirror. This would save the FreeMed people from the task to provide it from their private mirror and get the package under control of the Bug Tracking System. 5. ~> apt-cache policy libdate-calc-perl libdate-calc-perl: Installed: (none) Candidate: 5.3-1 Version Table: 5.3-1 0 499 http://debian.tu-bs.de testing/main Packages 50 http://debian.tu-bs.de unstable/main Packages --> Same as 1. 6. php4-pear-modules I would proceed like described at item 4. ... 7. phpwebtool Same as in item 4. I think the best way to start is with 4., 6. and 7. (libbit-vector-perl, php4-pear-modules, phpwebtool) to try to gain profit from the Debian community. This would save time of the FreeMed people to concentrate on their own topic, the freeb and freemed packages. If anybody feels oblilged to start with one of these tasks and something remains unclear feel free to ask for further details. Kind regards Andreas. -- Walter Alfonso Núnez Rivera Médico - Programador Pascual de Andagoya 140 Lima 32 Perú