[boost] Re: AW: Progress

From: Nathan Myers (ncm_at_[hidden])
Date: 1998-12-07 21:26:44

Sean A Corfield writes:
 > <Dietmar.Kuehl_at_[hidden]> wrote:
 > [I don't think that we should produce a competing version unless we are
 > uncomfortable with the SGI STL ones or if we have much better ideas.]
 > 
 > Would SGI release them to Boost? It would be a good way to broaden 
 > their audience and it would signal a committee willingness to
 > consider for possible future inclusion in the Standard. (If we so wish)

SGI's license terms for STL are extremely liberal, allowing us to do 
almost anything we like with it.  That includes adding GPL'd code to
it and releasing a whole GPL'd STL.  So the only question is whether
we want to risk a divergence from SGI's code.

As I understand it, that was part of the point of doing this project,
to discover whether another interface would be better.  Of course 
any such alternative should have a different name(space).

What I'd like to do with SGI's STL is to start by moving everything
nonstandard into a separate library, so we have the std:: stl and
the LibSgi:: extensions.  (Of course "LibSgi" is an alias.)  Then
people who think they have better ideas about hashing can make 
competing versions, and some future committee can choose among them.

Nathan Myers
ncm_at_[hidden]
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