Dear authors,
The revised submission of your manuscript was first reviewed by two reviewers, who had also evaluated the original manuscript. Because their estimates of the manuscript after revisions were quite different, I decided it was needed to have the work evaluated by additional reviewers. That is why it took up quite some extra time and we ended up with 4 reviews, of which 3 have provided additional comments to be addressed. The additional reviewers have evaluated the work considering all existing review comments. The overall result is that the manuscript needs further revisions before it can be published in GMD. I have combined the responses of all 4 reviewers in one attachment, because not all of the comments are visible in the system. Please refer to the attached pdf when making your revisions.

Kind regards

Heiko Goelzer

Dear authors,

the reviewers in the last round of revisions were happy with the improvements of the manuscript. I can therefore accept the paper for publication in GMD, subject to a few minor revisions. One of the reviewers had a few more technical corrections that I would like you to consider. They are pasted below.

Kind regards

Heiko Goelzer



Suggested revisions

Page 2
"making a steep"
--> making for a steep

"Open Source"
Is this a proper name?

Page 3
"some varying"
Grammar

"the second category of users gets back to the WSL/SLF"
--> requests support from?

"don’t have the same long learning curve"
I would encourage avoiding contractions.please fix throughout

"and are more intuitive and educational than CLI"
delete

"at deeper levels"
delete

"a significant investment"
Time, money, and code?

"quite fast"
--> quickly

"short term"
--> short-term

"editor"
--> developer?

"even to keep the product running,"
Unclear

Page 4
"standard toolkits"
--> "Ui-toolkits"


"languages"
--> "programming languages"?

"the product"
What is the product in this case? GUI? Be clear

"This practically means"
--> "Practically this means"

"when another intern or student with the proper skill set can be found and funded"
I guess the academic mindset is implicit but maybe worth noting v.clearly

"about the new options"
That are added after the intern leaves?

"in order to be useful to the end user."
Abrupt ending. Need a linkage with what this paper is solving

"Requirements"
Of what?

Page 5
"among others."
--> such as?

"INI2"
I’m not loving a Wikipedia link but I cannot find anything better to suggest.

"It is"
It = what?

Page 6
"principle of operation"
Do you mean work flow or similar?. This is not clear to me

"therefore"
--> still

"The user workflow is described in Fig."
This is a nice addition

Page 8
"The approach that has been laid out by (Havens et al., 2020) relies on Docker images"
I am not sure this section adds anything, indeed it felt disjoint. Maybe worth moving to lit review?

Page 9
"his or her"
--> their

"inheriting the Atomic class"
Which is what?

Page 10
"his or her"
--> their

"and merged back before writing out"
I assume no conflicts really happen?

"his or her"
--> their

Page 11
"(e. g."
No Space

Page 13
"Figure 8. Simple example of templates"
Maybe expand this caption to be more descriptive. They should be stand alone. Check the other captions too

Page 16
"as a fat client"
native client?

"very fast"
--> quickly

"This means that end users don’t need to"
--> "do not"
There are a few other contractions in this. Please avoid contractions.

Dear authors,

thanks for improving your manuscript according to the reviewer's comments. I am happy to accept the paper for publication.

Best greetings

Heiko Goelzer