Re: [boost] RFC: Community maintained libraries

Subject: Re: [boost] RFC: Community maintained libraries
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-12-06 12:52:37

On 5 Dec 2013 at 21:23, Beman Dawes wrote:

> The steering committee does not have any access, as they deal with policy
> rather than operations. I think you meant to say the Release Managers. They
> do have admit access to all boostorg repos.

Apologies for the error.

> > (FYI I very much like the idea of an active pruning strategy for
> > Boost so undermaintained libraries get actively purged. Less is
> > more!)
> 
> There is no current policy to purge "undermaintained" libraries. Usefulness
> to users is the metric Boost has traditionally used in deciding to remove a
> library. A library typically becomes much less useful to users if it is
> replaced by a much better library or a core language feature, and then only
> after enough time has passed that the library really doesn't have users
> anymore.

Well I won't revisit my previously stated arguments on this list. 
Suffice it to say that I draw the deprecation and pruning line a lot 
closer to the present size of Boost than most others do - in 
particular, I want to see incentives created for improved funding of 
work on those parts of Boost which need TLC but those companies which 
depend on such parts would rather they get the code for free with no 
associated responsibilites.

i.e., to be clear, I would suggest an aggressive pruning and 
deprecation policy as a method of giving people a business case to 
take to their managements which they would process as an End Of Life 
support issue. Whether in practice a library *actually* gets deleted 
from the approved list of Boost libraries is entirely another matter, 
but the threat needs to be credible.

Niall

-- 
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Work Portfolio: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/nialldouglas/