Re: [boost] Re: Re: Boost.org Site Suggeswtion was [RE: Re: AdobeOpenSourceLibrary]

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-03-04 06:40:36

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 12:25:30 -0800, Robert Ramey wrote
> There are a couple of reasons a wiki page might not be the best choice.
> 
> a) too easily hackable
> b) I very much like the idea of getting some rough statistics.  e.g. 
> how many people use library x.  This presume data with some sort of simple
> structure.

Here's a couple thoughts.  First off, the need for this was brought up at
OOPSLA.  People really like to see a list of users when evaluating if they are
going to use a new open source tool.  This is a very common feature of open
source projects. So I think we really need to find a way to do this. As an
example:

http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE-users.html

As for how to gather the information, I think there needs to be 2 phases. 
Phase 1 would be a 'logo like' campaign to gather up current users.  We can
use the wiki/mail list and whatever tools we have available to gather the
information.  Publish a request on comp.lang.c++, etc.  From this, I'll
volunteer to collate the list and create a fixed web page we can incorporate
into the main Boost web site.

Phase 2 would be to come up with a way to maintain this.  We could use a wiki
page or perhaps a small web form to gather up information.  This might be a
simple php script that takes the information and updates the wiki or sends me
email to add the information to the site.  Periodically we would gather these
up and add them in.

Actually now that I've written it, it seems like designing the form should be
the first step...

Jeff