Looking for new maintainer(s)

[mrbean-bremen]

I'm currently the maintainer of the svg-net organization and one of the three core developers of the sole contained repository SVG. I have not contributed to the repo for quite some time, and given that I don't use SVG myself and don't know the code base well anymore, find it difficult to make comprehensive reviews. This is unlikely to change, as most of my time and my personal interest in open source projects is directed at other projects (related to DICOM and to pytest).

I had originally contributed to SVG as I had been using it myself, and did some cleanup and maintenance work on the repo. I also came up with the idea to move the repo from the company organization vvvv to a separate organization, with the hope, that other related repos (especially Svg.Skia) would be added to the organization (which did not work out). The organization has eventually been created by @tebjan, the original maintainer of SVG, and I was given co-ownership of it. Admittedly, I wasn't very happy about it from the beginning, but have seen it as a temporary state, until someone better suited came up. This has not happened, also SVG has remained the sole repository in the organization.

I'm now looking for somebody with a good knowledge of the library and the time and willingness to take over maintenance. Some experience in communicating with contributors (and some patience) would also be helpful. The frequency of issues and PRs (und thus the maintenance effort) here is not high, but there is some backlog that has been collected over the years, and that needs some cleanup and handling.

The library is used increasingly in other software and packages, and it would be nice if there would be consistent maintenance ensured in the future. Feel free to add any thoughts and ideas of how to achieve this.

UPDATE: Just to re-iterate: there is still no new maintainer in sight after a year, still hoping for a volunteer. I myself am not able to do any substantial maintenance concerning the code base, except for some administrative tasks.

[paulushub]

I'm currently the maintainer of the svg-net organization

The picture is not really clear. You are not listed as a member of the svg-net organization, and currently only @gvheertum is the member. What is the structure of the svg-net organization currently? Are you handing over the organization?
Is the current member @gvheertum not willing to continue or take over?

[mrbean-bremen]

Ok, I should have stated that more clearly, sorry.

There are currently 4 members in the svg-net organization, 3 of them with a private settings (now 2 of them, as I have set mine to public to avoid more confusion), and 2 of them (@tebjan, who created the organization, and myself) owners of the organization. As I understand, @tebjan doesn't have the time for maintenance anymore, but he can better comment on this himself. Though I would like to have his opinion on any potential maintainer.

There is also the group svg-net.core with 3 members, who we had set up as maintainer of the SVG repository. Again, of the 3 members, currently only one (myself) is more or less active in the repo.

As for @gvheertum - he has to answer this himself :)

[gvheertum]

I'm currently the maintainer of the svg-net organization

The picture is not really clear. You are not listed as a member of the svg-net organization, and currently only @gvheertum is the member. What is the structure of the svg-net organization currently? Are you handing over the organization?

Is the current member @gvheertum not willing to continue or take over?

I'm kinda in the same boat time wise. Since I pursued the path to management and gave up my entrepreneurship and most of the associated projects my involvement also became quite stale. I did some contributions in the past which took the project a bit forward and was involved with some of the issue analysis (both resulted in me added as member which I thought was quite an honor), but as with most of my free time projects this kinda slipped out of my focus.

Although I still find the project quite interesting and still want to do some coding in my free time, I am willing to try to up my involvement a bit (review, cleaning, etc) but I'm afraid that it would be a risky bet to rely on me heavily. So as a co-owner or peer I am willing to work together with others to try to maintain, but sole ownership feels a bit too much for now.

Cooperating and coordinating stuff and keeping the repo and git environment clean is something I am comfortable with, in-depth knowledge of the code and bit less, but still quite some understanding.

[mrbean-bremen]

Cooperating and coordinating stuff and keeping the repo and git environment clean is something I am comfortable with, in-depth knowledge of the code and bit less, but still quite some understanding.

That would also be helpful. There is a reason why I wrote "maintainer(s)" in the subject title - having several people doing maintenance is also a valid option, of course. As is transferring the repo into another organization like "dotnetprojects", if that would help with maintenance, or any other option that I haven't thought of.

[paulushub]

Thanks for the updates.
Currently, I maintain the SharpVectors for mainly WPF with comparably less complete support for GDI.
When dotnetprojects/SVGImage was running into a similar situation as SVG-NET, the maintainer asked me for transfer,
but I asked to be added as a contributor and I currently contribute to that project too - mainly resolving reported issues etc.

The initial work I planned to do with the SVG-NET stalled when I discovered the LGPL issue and reported it, but like
many others, I now code a lot of Python stuff 😃
With over 80 contributors to the SVG-NET, hopefully more will step forward. I will watch this thread, as I hope to start
a new work on SVG, and use this parser.

[mrbean-bremen]

With over 80 contributors to the SVG-NET, hopefully more will step forward

Yeah, but in reality there is currently only one active contributor (@H1Gdev), and one occasional contributor (@inforithmics). There is also @wieslawsoltes, but he has his hands full with Svg.Skia (which I initially had hoped would also be a part of the SVG-NET).
Mentioning them to get some reaction, of course ;)

[paulushub]

@mrbean-bremen @tebjan @H1Gdev
So far not much response to this thread as I have hoped. This is my offer for consideration

1. Take over the svg-net organization (including Nuget)
2. Have the repository transferred to my current organization (open-source company, Elinam LLC)

I am starting my holidays tomorrow Dec 29, and could start working on cleaning, clearing issues and PR and planning for the Release 4.0 (including splitting rendering and processing).
Currently planning to start a project that include SVG parsing and rendering, and was planning to fork the SVG-NET as the base for this project.

[gvheertum]

@paulushub somehow the way GitHub issues/discussions work is not really bringing this to attention of contributors. To be honest, I started following this only after I got mentioned in the thread.

Moving the whole repo to a different organization feels like a bit of a stretch (since that also might result in new urls and such). Perhaps transferring or sharing ownership would be best for now?

I do appreciate the work you are going to put in it (especially the splitting and upgrading), so I am very positive regarding your involvement. So big thanks to that.

What you might also consider is forking and renaming it (e.g. slap core on it or something). That way you work on a successor which might gain traction and popularity itself.

Regardless of the choice, I am willing to help a bit on the topics I mentioned before. But I have to find a way to get GitHub a bit more "in my daily process" to ensure I'm not neglecting it.

[paulushub]

@gvheertum Thanks for the response.

somehow the way GitHub issues/discussions work is not really bringing this to attention of contributors.

I do not understand why. Also, I did not receive your response in my email notifications!

The fork was the original plan as few things might change in the core (also planning to document the API).
I need a new SVG base to process the following (as the CSS parser in SharpVectors is regular expression based and I will prefer the ExCSS: this API is also not documented!!)

1. Markdown to LaTeX (converting SVG to Tikz),
2. SVG renderer for WinUI 3 (beyond the The SVG Table supported by DirectWrite)
3. etc.

This thread, however, paused the initial plan.
If no response by the weekend, I will continue with a fork (Svg.Core is, however, taken, will check if the current owner will transfer as it is no longer updated).

[mrbean-bremen]

To be honest, I started following this only after I got mentioned in the thread.

This was exactly the reason why I mentioned a few contributors here 😀

@paulushub - I much appreciate your offer, and I will add you to the list of core developers which should give you all rights in the repo, so can start cleaning and clearing issues right away...

As for the transfer: I agree this is not urgent, and I will defer this to next year, when people will be back from the vacations. I'll wait at least wait for the opinion of @tebjan for this (as he created the organization).

@gvheertum - the transfer as such is not a big issue. I have done this a couple of times, and apart from the transfer itself it only means adapting a few URLs. The old repo URL will redirect to the new location, so that is not an issue. I'm not sure if that is still true if the organization is deleted, but we can wait with that.

I would also like to hear the opinion of @wieslawsoltes on that. Svg.Skia is an important project for Svg, as it provides another frontend that covers platforms no longer supported by the main frontend. There has been some preliminary work done by @wieslawsoltes to split frontend and backend for the use of Svg.Skia, and it would make sense to coordinate the rendering/processing split with him to have a common base (e.g. to avoid to need to work with custom forks).

[mrbean-bremen]

Svg.Core is, however, taken, will check if the current owner will transfer as it is no longer updated

Yeah, that is unfortunate. The owner actually made a PR in this repo that was a bit incomprehensible, but instead of responding to the questions he just committed the (small) change to his fork and published it as Svg.Core, without changing the documentation or anything. I noticed this only later when a user wrote an issue (that had already been fixed) because he used that (outdated) version.

I'm under the impression that this his usual mode of work - as I just checked, his 56 nuget packages mostly seem to follow the same pattern, several of them even clones of the same repo (by someone else) with different names. Not sure if this is intentional abuse or just missing knowledge... But it would make sense to contact him.

[paulushub]

I'll wait at least wait for the opinion of @tebjan for this (as he created the organization).

I was hoping to get some reaction too (a bit confusing) 😀

On Svg.Skia with recent commit comments like the following, it might not be encouraging for the future:

Revert "Change license to GNU Affero General Public License"

NOTE on Wiesław Šoltés Profile: @wieslawsoltes's activity is private

[mrbean-bremen]

NOTE on Wiesław Šoltés Profile: @wieslawsoltes's activity is private

Yes, I noticed, but this doesn't hinder him from commenting here. As I wrote, I will wait a bit to make sure everyone interested had a chance to comment.

[paulushub]

@mrbean-bremen Sorry, It might not be the right place to ask.
What is the current practice with regards to approving and merging PRs?