AW: Status of OpenSlide support

Mahadev Satyanarayanan satya at cs.cmu.edu
Mon Mar 25 16:25:59 EDT 2019 

Hi Martin,
   The reason is simple:  no one has had the cycles to spare. 
This has not been a funded project for us for many years.  Adam, 
Benjamin and Jan have contributed whatever time they could
spare, when they could, on a best effort basis.    This gets harder
to do over time.   Adam's advice on #1-#4 is exactly right.
If a person of the right caliber who can make the time
commitment is identified, we can work on the details of commit
access to github.
            -- Satya

On Monday 25 March 2019 12:11:24 Martin Weihrauch wrote:
> That's OK. However, many of us don't understand, why pull requests for a code change that contains exactly 2 lines of code wait since July 2018. Is there anything, which we can do to speed up that process specifically?:
> https://github.com/openslide/openslide/pull/246/files
> 
> or
> 
> https://github.com/openslide/openslide/pull/244/files
> 
> Again, thanks for creating that valuable library!!
> 
> Martin
> 
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Mahadev Satyanarayanan <satya at cs.cmu.edu> 
> Gesendet: Montag, 25. März 2019 16:42
> An: Adam Goode <adam at spicenitz.org>
> Cc: Martin Weihrauch <m.weihrauch at smartinmedia.com>; openslide-users at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
> Betreff: Re: Status of OpenSlide support
> 
> Ah!  Thank you for the clarification, Adam.  I thought you meant a completely new fork with permanent independent life (e.g. OpenOffice and LibreOffice).
>    -- Satya
> 
> On Monday 25 March 2019 11:28:09 Adam Goode wrote:
> > Hi Satya,
> > 
> > I agree it's best to always have a plan to bring forked changes into 
> > the main openslide project.
> > GitHub is a little unusual in the sense that nearly all proposed 
> > changes start out as a "fork": 
> > https://github.com/openslide/openslide/pulls is a list of forks whose authors have proposed them to be merged.
> > https://github.com/openslide/openslide/network/members is a list of 
> > some forks (folks who are doing some sort of development).
> > 
> > It takes a good amount of time to review code and help get code into a 
> > high quality, merge-ready state. I think it is to the benefit of 
> > anyone using OpenSlide to help contribute to this.
> > 
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > 
> > Adam
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 10:50 Mahadev Satyanarayanan 
> > <satya at cs.cmu.edu>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi Adam and Martin,
> > >    Is #5 (inability to do commit changes without the help of one of 
> > > the original
> > > developers) really the showstopper at present?   I don't have that
> > > impression, but
> > > if that's the case it is easily fixed by us granting permission to 
> > > specific,
> > > carefully-vetted individuals.   We don't have a community-developed
> > > process in place, but for a small number of individuals it shouldn't 
> > > be a big deal.  If you can convince Adam Goode, Benjamin Gilbert, 
> > > and Jan Harkes that you can be trusted with this role (and they tell me so),
> > > I can work out the mechanism.   There is no need to create a fork just to
> > > be able to commit changes to the OpenSlide code base.
> > >
> > > My understanding is that it is #1 and #2 (lack of time and 
> > > expertise) that is the limiting factor to OpenSlide evolution at the 
> > > moment.  Adam's advice on #1 to #4 are right on target for  
> > > addressing that.
> > >
> > >  Cheers
> > >            -- Satya
> > >
> > > On Monday 25 March 2019 10:23:15 Adam Goode wrote:
> > > > Hi Martin,
> > > >
> > > > Benjamin and I are are both quite busy with other things. I cannot 
> > > > speak for Benjamin, but in my case I am not able to take money to 
> > > > work on side projects like this. It is likely that Benjamin has a similar situation.
> > > >
> > > > Given this information, how should you move forward? The typical 
> > > > advice I give to organizations interested in OpenSlide is this:
> > > >
> > > > 1. Please identify someone in your organization to work on OpenSlide.
> > > This
> > > > can be someone in your development group or research group, or 
> > > > possibly even a grad student in some circumstances.
> > > > 2. Explicitly allocate some amount of time for this person to work 
> > > > on OpenSlide (perhaps 15-20%, possibly more while getting started).
> > > > 3. Introduce this person to the list and me.
> > > > 4. I will provide some of my time to answer questions and give 
> > > > some help getting started.
> > > > 5. Depending on the circumstances, we may be able to grant 
> > > > permissions to this person to let them approve pull requests and 
> > > > do other things. This would be a good outcome, though I would have 
> > > > to discuss with Benjamin and the CMU folks exactly what criteria we would use for granting this.
> > > >
> > > > Note that, completely independently, you can fork the project and 
> > > > make whatever changes you like. I encourage this! But please try 
> > > > to publish
> > > your
> > > > changes as we have done, and do so under the same license so that 
> > > > we
> > > could
> > > > eventually merge changes back someday. Forking may still be the 
> > > > correct thing to do even if we do steps #1-4 above, since I can't 
> > > > currently say what the criteria for #5 would be.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Adam
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 2:07 AM Martin Weihrauch < 
> > > > m.weihrauch at smartinmedia.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Dear Benjamin:
> > > > >
> > > > > I wanted to inquire, what the status of OpenSlide is. The last 
> > > > > commit
> > > is
> > > > > almost 1 year old and there are some important pull requests 
> > > > > (problem
> > > with
> > > > > bif, Motic and introduction of VMIC) waiting to be introduced.
> > > > >
> > > > > I guess that you may have not the time to maintain it currently, 
> > > > > which would be sad and a problem for so many of us, who rely on it.
> > > > >
> > > > > Maybe some of the community here (me included) could throw in 
> > > > > some
> > > money
> > > > > and we could pay you or someone else e. g. a quarter or a half 
> > > > > of
> > > his/her
> > > > > salary to further maintain and expand this important library, 
> > > > > which you created.
> > > > >
> > > > > Looking forward to hearing from you.
> > > > >
> > > > > Martin
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > openslide-users mailing list
> > > > > openslide-users at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
> > > > > https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/openslide-users
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > 
>

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