[Insight-developers] ITK 3.18 Plans : Moving Multi-threaded registration classes from Review

Thu Dec 3 23:42:17 EST 2009

Makes sense to me.

Thanks for the clarification,

Bill

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 8:59 PM, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
> Bill,
>
>
> Let me elaborate and clarify on what Stephen posted.
>
> (... and...please bear with me, this is a long email...)
>
>
>
> There are two parallel maintenance efforts related to ITK.
>
>
> A) On one hand, there is the work that Kitware does under
>    a maintenance contract funded by the NLM.
>
>                       and
>
> B) On the other hand, there is the work that the larger ITK
>     community does for ITK.
>
>
>
> The work in (A) is mostly reserved for the kind of things
> that require Kitware's infrastructure, and the kind of things
> that no other organization would be able to do as effectively.
> For example:
>
>   - Hosting CDash dashboards
>   - Hosting the Wiki, Bug Tracker, and CVS
>   - Hosting the mailing lists
>   - Hosting and maintaining the Insight Journal
>
> and for dealing with specific tasks that provide coordination
> and support to the community.  For example:
>
>   - Coordinating releases
>   - Fixing structural bugs
>   - Providing support in the mailing list
>
>
> In general, Kitware takes care of tasks that other academic
> and industry sites will have a hard time justifying to their
> management, and even to their own IT support.
>
>
> The typical challenge for Kitware is to find a balance in which
> we do "enough" to keep the ITK house in order, but without
> doing "too much" as to take over the control of the toolkit.
>
>
>
> If we err on the side of doing too much, and taking too much
> control, then we would destroy the Open Source spirit of the
> ITK community, and contributors would get discouraged.
>
> If we err on the side of not doing enough, then the community
> muscle will lack a structural back bone, and certain maintenance
> tasks may not be performed, leading to the deterioration of the
> toolkit.
>
>
>
> Since we have a limited maintenance budget (as all budgets are)
> for the work in (A), what we usually do is to list specific tasks that
> Kitware must get done under that budget and during the one-year
> period of maintenance.  Stephen is referring to that list that we
> drafted as our target.
>
> When we say that we "put some limits on the release efforts",
> we mean that only a certain portion of our maintenance budget
> will be dedicated to those specific efforts, simply because there
> are also other things in the list.
>
> This doesn't mean that we are imposing limits on the community
> as a whole. That is we are not suggesting any limits on (B).
>
> Even if we sometimes may really want to do such evil things
> [ e.g. like getting rid of VS6.0   :-)     ]   we have to bow to the
> governance of ITK, which is fundamentally driven by the community.
> Should the community decide (and volunteer) to do other tasks,
> then, by all means we (Kitware) are in no position to restrict them.
>
>
> So, let me rephrase Stephen's post:
>
> Using Kitware's NLM  maintenance budget, we planned to
> focus on only one major release during this year of funding,
> accompanied by two low-key releases that mostly carry
> bug fixes.  The rationale is that in anticipation of ITK 4.0,
> it didn't make sense to make big changes in the toolkit,
> using current (limited) maintenance funding, if we were
> expecting to have a larger funding, including both Kitware
> and other academic and industry partners for doing a large
> scale overhaul of the toolkit for the creation of  ITK 4.0.
>
>
> The larger release that Stephen is talking about is intended
> to Hold-the-ITK-Fort during the time that ITK 4.0 will be under
> development (about 6 to 12 months).  Therefore, we are
> looking with that release to a very very stable, release.
> Meaning, that such release will not bring much new features, nor
> new code. Instead it will focus on cleaning up a large portion
> of the bugs that are logged in the bug tracker.
>
>
> More specifically, our release assumptions are
>
> * January 2010:  ITK 3.18  Low-key relase
> * July      2010:  ITK 3.20   Solid release
> * Sept     2010:  ITK 3.22   Low key release
> * Nov      2010:  ITK 4.0 ??? (subject to RFP)
>
>
>
> What we consider to be a low-key release is to
> move 4~6 papers from the Insight Journal into
> the Review directory, and to do the usual freeze
> and clean up period.
>
> The Solid release included a lot of bug fixes,
> and moving some large contributions from
> the Insight Journal to Insight Applications.
> In particular we were looking into moving
> the VV (4D Slicer) application from Creatis,
> now that Qt is distributed under an LGPL
> license, and potentially factorizing some
> of its components to make easier for people
> to create other Qt+ITK applications, just as
> we did in the early years of the toolkit with
> FLTK+ITK applications.
>
>
>
> All that said, the RFP for an ITK 4.0 has not
> been posted as early as we were expecting,
> so all that planning above, may or may not
> happen.
>
>
>
> Coming back to my original post:
>
>
> What I'm proposing for the release of ITK 3.18 is:
>
> 1) Moving about 5 papers from the Insight Journal
>
> 2) Moving the multi-threaded classes from Review
>    to Algorithms
>
> 3) Fixing the 64 bits issues in Mac and Windows.
>
>
> Of course, it is part of our job (as Kitware) to encourage
> and help all the members of the community to take on
> maintenance responsibilities. So, if other groups have
> needs and/or interests on moving more code, that simply
> has to be brought to be discussed and coordinated here
> in the developers-list.
>
>
>
>           Luis
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> First I heard of the one release restriction. Can someone elaborate?
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Stephen Aylward
>> <stephen.aylward at kitware.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Luis,
>>>
>>> Recall there is only funding for one main release over the next 12
>>> months.  The goal was to focus on getting stuff into
>>> InsightApplications from the IJ.   I also agree moving code from
>>> Review to main ITK should be pursued.    The other releases weren't
>>> suppose to do much moving from IJ to ITK in anticipation of ITK v4.
>>>
>>> Are you planning on 3.18 being the big ITK release between now and next October?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Stephen
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 2:19 PM, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>>>> As the release date of ITK 3.18 gets closer,
>>>> we should start defining what we want to see
>>>> included in this release.
>>>>
>>>> We have a list of IJ papers that are suggested
>>>> to be moved into Review for ITK 3.18.
>>>>
>>>> And we probably should try to move some code
>>>> from Review into final destination directories.
>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>> In particular, there is some interest in moving
>>>> the multi-threaded registration metrics and their
>>>> auxiliary classes.
>>>>
>>>> Officially, some of the Linux distributions
>>>> (Fedora and Debian) cannot include the files in
>>>> Review and Patented due to their unclear
>>>> licensing status.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone have objections to moving these
>>>> registration classes from Code/Review into
>>>> Code/Algorithms ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Thanks for any comments,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>              Luis
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Stephen R. Aylward, Ph.D.
>>> Director of Medical Imaging Research
>>> Kitware, Inc. - North Carolina Office
>>> http://www.kitware.com
>>> stephen.aylward (Skype)
>>> (919) 969-6990 x300
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>>
>