Re: [boost] ASIO does not fully support Windows Runtime (WinRT), and a suggestion for providing support

Subject: Re: [boost] ASIO does not fully support Windows Runtime (WinRT), and a suggestion for providing support
From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-15 17:37:15

On 1/15/2015 4:25 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:
> On 15 Jan 2015 at 12:42, Edward Diener wrote:
>
>> I highly object to the tone of your response. Bringing up a matter on
>> this mailing list related to a Boost library is not a command for anyone
>> to do anything. By responding the way you have done you are discouraging
>> people with issues from using Boost mailing lists to start a discussion
>> about a particular library.
>
> I apologise if I have offended anyone on the list, including you
> Edward.
>
> However, there is an etiquette when dealing with deficiencies in open
> source libraries. You first raise the issue with the library's
> maintainers before going onto public lists - and before I replied to
> the OP, I checked the github ASIO issue tracker and the Boost issue
> tracker and found no mention of the deficiencies.

I do not know of anything within Boost which says that library 
maintainers are supposed to be contacted directly before one posts 
issues on the mailing lists. In fact I have always assumed that the 
mailing lists were the correct way to first bring up an issue and only 
if there was no response from anybody connected with the library in 
question does one then attempt to go further. Regardless of how this 
normally occurs please realize that the mailing lists are completely 
viable ways of alerting library maintainers to issues regarding their 
library, with the protocol normally being that the OP should have the 
form of "[library] Some Subject" as the subject of the mailing list post.

I hope you also realize that programmers who use Boost, and who are not 
contributors themselves to Boost libraries, do occasionally send mailing 
lists messages to the developers mailing list and do not know anything 
about supposed etiquettes about suggested changes to a library. They are 
simple bringing up issues and assume the mailing lists are one way to do 
this, which they in fact are.

Of course programmmers can file bug and/or suggestion reports on Boost 
trac or issue pull requests for changes on Github. But I would actually 
expect attempting to directly contact a library developer is a thing a 
programmer would do only as a last resort, if other things met little or 
no response.

Like you I also viewed the OP as a very large request and or suggestion. 
But a library maintainer has every right to respond as he sees fit, one 
of those responses being that whatever changes which are being asked for 
he is unwilling to implement for his own given reasons. But certainly 
nobody should come down on anyone bringing up an issue regarding a 
library on this mailing list unless the post is insulting or derogatory 
to that library for personal reasons. That certainly was not the case in 
any respect in the OP.