Help with viewing slides on the web

[Benjamin Gilbert]

On Wed, Feb 07, 2018 at 10:31:55AM +0100, PD Dr. M. Weihrauch wrote:
> Why don't the companies, which read this list (among which is mine)
> throw together money, hire a full time developer for a year, who
> integrates all of these currently foreign slide formats that are still
> missing into OpenSlide (e. g. Olympus, Zeiss, Precipoint, etc pp)?

Go for it, if you'd like.  I haven't had bandwidth for OpenSlide for
quite some time.  I'd still like to finish stabilizing the
infrastructure of the project (some licensing odds and ends, long-term
storage for sample slides, etc.) but I don't think I can promise actual
development work, at least for now.  If another developer were
interested in putting significant time into OpenSlide, I'd be willing
to contribute advice, and perhaps some amount of design or code review --
but not handholding.

Please don't underestimate the magnitude of the work.  Many of
OpenSlide's drivers have been implemented, in whole or in part, via
manual examination of sample slides.  In the past, there have been
multiple attempts to contribute format drivers which were implemented
using vendor documentation obtained under non-disclosure agreements. 
If those non-disclosure agreements do not clearly allow open-source
implementations (and most don't) then adding such drivers to OpenSlide
might create undesired complications for the project.  Best to find a
developer who's comfortable with both C and hexdump.  :-)

--Benjamin Gilbert