Re: [boost] [simd] Hardware support

Subject: Re: [boost] [simd] Hardware support
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-04-08 14:40:15

>> After all, the toy edition is good enough. It works. It just will come
>> with no guarantees that it won't eat your data, and it will probably be
>> quite slow.
> 
> I can understand if you want to keep certain features in the
> closed-source version to return the costs and make profit. But that
> shouldn't impede the Boost version from evolving. If that feature has
> high demand, I would expect it to eventually appear in the open-source
> version. If soneone offers a patch implementing that feature, I would
> expect you to give a fair consideration of it, even if it makes things
> differently to your closed-source code. What I wouldn't expect or want
> to see is the author referring the community to the commercial version
> instead.

I'd hope to allow competition. But if you think developing high quality
C++ code is expensive, then developing high quality storage code is
considerably more so. I think recouping the cost of development is very
reasonable, after which it can be open sourced.

> I'd like to make myself clear. I'm absolutely not against people making
> money on the software they write. But at the same time, if those people
> come to Boost I think they should be aware and committed to Boost and
> open-source community. If there is a chance of a conflict between making
> profit and commitment to opensource, I'd rather them avoid that conflict
> by not coming to Boost in the first place.

Profit and open source are not in conflict. If anything, especially in
recent years, there is plenty of profit in open source. I, and many
others even on here, make a living from it.

I'm also mindful of Anthony Williams' Just Threads! which is effectively
a v4 complete rewrite of Boost.Thread. That's a commercial product held
totally separate to Boost, and it has been woefully underused because
people didn't know it existed. Some would argue - and I'm not sure I
include myself here - that if Just Threads! were the all new singing and
dancing Boost.Thread rewrite, and if people running into problems with
Boost.Thread could pay the fee for the new rewrite until its development
costs were paid off, that could bring new very high quality developed
for profit libraries to Boost.

As I said, I'm not sure I agree with that myself, lots of slippery
slopes in there. But equally I've seen old versions of big games engines
released to open source after they no longer make money, and that's been
a *huge* benefit to open source. So the model can work, and work very well.

Niall

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