ZoomHub Sunsetting

[iangilman]

Daniel Gasienica (@gasi), owner of ZoomHub (a service for converting and displaying high-resolution images with OpenSeadragon), has decided to shut down his project at the end of this month. It's already partially shut down (not accepting new content), but you can see it here: http://zoomhub.net/.

This is a heads up for anyone who was using the service that it's time to move your content to another service, such as https://zoomable.ca/.

ZoomHub has a long history, originally starting as zoom.it over a decade ago, created by the Seadragon team at Microsoft to address the fact that the file conversion was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to sharing high resolution images with Seadragon (now OpenSeadragon). Eventually Microsoft shut the service down, and Daniel (who was part of the original zoom.it team) worked to resurrect it as ZoomHub.

It's always been a side project for him, though, and it's gotten to be too much work to maintain. The good news is that lots of other tools and services has come up in the meantime to help fill the need. Still, it's always said to let a project go. The source code will remain available:

https://github.com/zoomhub/zoomhub

… and if anyone in the community is interested in taking over the project, I understand Daniel might be willing to pass it on to a good home.

Thank you, Daniel, for all you have done for the OpenSeadragon community!

[iangilman]

Daniel says he might be up for keeping it running if he can bring in enough money that he's not paying out of pocket for it. It's not a lot… $200/month total should take care of it. Let us know if you might be interested in helping to support keeping the service up!

[iangilman]

In a wonderful show of community spirit, the folks at https://zoomable.ca/ are pitching in to help keep ZoomHub afloat! The service is back up and running, and will be ongoing.

ZoomHub could still use more support… if you want to see the service continue and can donate something to help keep it running, please let us know!