RE: [boost] Submission policy

From: Gary Powell (Gary.Powell_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-05-10 11:47:28

> >Yes, but what I was asking, in effect, was: Should I submit a library
> that, well, is a direct competitor to the "Insert Name Here"
> libraries already in the vault, both interface- and
> >implementation- wise?
> >
> >Boost hasn't (formally) picked anything yet in the *..* department.
> 
I'd say "yes" go ahead add your library to the vault. Until boost picks
something, and maybe even after, we can't really evaluate an alternative
proposal until there is something to evaluate.

Other free software:
1) participants join up and make a merged version. ("ET" and "BL" became
"LL")
2) participants argue and split into opposing camps, KDE, and Gnome.
3) One group stops updating their software and the other marches ahead,
effectively taking over, HP STL vs SGI STL (and the STL Port.)

So the result is all across the board.

As for backward compatibility, we could just stop maintaining a library
after it was deemed to be less than satisfactory. I'd hate for us to make a
choice, and then next year have a new library which effectively obsoletes
the previous one and is a better implementation be rejected merely because
we had already chosen one version. And the two libraries had a different
interface. A standards committee has this problem, boost should be a little
more loose.  We should be able to make a best choice now, distribute it,
listen to the feedback, fix/modify/drop support. That way it won't happen by
the standards committee.

  -gary-