Re: [boost] XXX owner unresponsive to persistent problems for multiple years (was: [test] boost.test owner ...)

Subject: Re: [boost] XXX owner unresponsive to persistent problems for multiple years (was: [test] boost.test owner ...)
From: Stephen Kelly (hello_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-11 19:54:34

Adam Wulkiewicz wrote:

> Olaf Van Der Spek wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/256063
>>>>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/256571
>>> I'm disputing there is a problem with orphaned libraries.  But just
>> Are you or are you not? ;)
>>
>>> letting anyone check in changes is not the solution.  Transfering
>>> maintenance responsibility to another person is the only real
>>> solution
>> I think having multiple maintainers is an even better solution.
> 
> Furthermore it wouldn't be a problem for the "community" to review pull
> requests if such additional maintainer needed some help. AFAIU the
> difference between Boost and many of the other open-source projects is
> that Boost is not one monolithic library/project but a group or
> container of libraries. Specific libraries has always been bound tightly
> with their authors. And with per-submodule access rights on GitHub this
> is even more noticeable. 

This is my impression too. Well said.

> We could think about relaxing this bound and go towards slightly more 
distributed model.

I'd like to see others' feedback on your ideas.

> I'm guessing that those hanging pull requests and patches on trac
> discourages people from the "outside" to get involved in the evelution
> of a library, find and fix bugs, etc.

Not to mention that some of the code is unmaintainable in its current state, 
and needs some clean-up/modernization in order to become maintainable.  The 
current way Boost seems to work is to prefer not to modernize in any way and 
choose the 'not changed means not (newly) broken' model.

Thanks,

Steve.