The open source process has been used widely and the process of selecting, testing and incorporating source code contributions has been well documented and tested. A key component of this process is the formation of a core committee of active developers who will make decisions on what is included, when and why. You could call this committee a benevolent dictatorship but we, and most other open source projects, see this as the only way to manage the development process effectively. Initially the committee will be made up of the initial core developers and OpenVPMS stakeholders. As other developers and industry participants become involved in the project we see this evolving into elected technical steering and management committees involving this group as well as members of the user community.