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: Marco Guazzone (marco.guazzone_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-12 02:30:38

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 1:54 AM, Stephen Kelly <hello_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 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.
>

I agree.
Having two or more maintainers assure quicker feedback to contributors.
I think there is a similar problem with Boost.Random. There're 11 open
pull request (one of them is mine ;) ) the older of which is nearly 1
year old.

Maybe, it's time to make a poll to find out what libs are or are not
maintained...

Best,

Marco