Please don't advertise proprietary products on the mailing list

[Benjamin Gilbert]

Hi all,

In recent months there have been a number of folks advertising proprietary
products on the mailing list -- slide viewers, slide management systems, and
so on.  I know that the folks doing this are trying to help, and that the
products being advertised are typically implemented using OpenSlide. 
However, if someone shows up with a question about OpenSlide, an open-source
library for reading whole-slide images, and is directed to a proprietary
graphical tool instead, we haven't actually answered their question!  More
generally, this sort of advertising increases the noise on the list, and
primarily benefits those products with the loudest advocates.  So please
don't do this.

In the coming months, I'll create a wiki page where creators of proprietary,
OpenSlide-using software can publish a paragraph or so on the merits of
their products.  That needs to wait until the license of the OpenSlide wiki
is sorted out*, but I'll get the page created immediately afterward.

Thanks.

--Benjamin Gilbert

* Specifically, the wiki currently has no license, which should be fixed.