Submission policy

From: Paul Baxter (paul_baxter_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-05-07 04:07:46

1) Since we are discussing submissions, I was wondering whether there are
any criteria regarding the content or style of a submission that are likely
to affect its submission.

For instance, a specialist library with excellent coding style and content
but with a limited audience. Does this get rejected (or not considered)
because it is not generally relevant?

Perhaps this would work itself out if few people come forward to review it;
I just think it may save potential applications some time if they knew up
front whether acceptance were likely (it takes a while to 'Boostify' code).

Perhaps a line or two in the library submission guidelines that libraries
should be generally applicable and this would be judged by brief discussions
on the mailing list before submission. (or alternatively a line suggesting
everything is welcome given licensing and coding style constraints.)

2) Are libraries that ONLY propose an interface (and perhaps partial
implementation) acceptable. I'm thinking here of say the graph work where
the license in the vault is for non-commercial use only, a restriction
preventing the code from being submitted formally. (at present, at least.)

Something like the graph discussions were extremely valuable and Jeremy et
al. are to be congratulated, but what now becomes of this work?

We could (I assume?) place the documentation with Boost and provide links to
the Notre Dame content, or we could just leave it out of Boost all together
and place a link to the ggcl project.

Perhaps it would be better to clarify up front what the license conditions
for a proposal would be to avoid taking up a lot of bandwidth on something
that ultimately couldn't be part of Boost.

Personally I gained a tremendous amount from the discussions but can see a
danger in future if we discuss/debug libraries that are never likely to be
part of Boost. Intellectually of course I want to judge on a case by case
basis, but my judgement and those of others on this list may not coincide on
the matter, what then?

Note I'm happy to accept say, Beman as the 'arbiter of good sense'!

Minor issues really and I'm conscious that arbitrary read tape is a big turn
off to volunteers who devote a lot of time to making Boost the success it is
today.

Regards

Paul Baxter