Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee

Subject: Re: [boost] CMake Announcement from Boost Steering Committee
From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir.prus_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-19 06:49:50

On 19/07/2017 03:01, Niall Douglas via Boost wrote:
>> There is no doubt that all SC members mean only good for Boost and C++
>> community, I know many of them as excellent developers who contributed a
>> lot to Boost. However, other members of SC are not involved much, and
>> some, including committee chair, do not seem to even have commit access
>> to Boost. Again, I'm sure everybody meant only best, but something went
>> wrong.

> (and for your information, Jon does not have commit access to Boost **by
> choice** for various reasons not important to this thread. Not for any
> other reason, certainly nothing to do with lack of service to Boost)

I am sure everybody has good reasons, but of 9 members of SC, I can only
find 4 in the list of GitHub project members, specifically Hartmut Kaiser,
Louise Dionne, Michael Caisse and Sebastian Redl. I could not find 5 others.
It is theoretically possible that I just did not recognize one of the people
who do not use full name on GitHub, and it would be great if the Steering
Committee either confirm or correct my numbers.

However, if the numbers are accurate, it means that significant part of the
SC, in fact majority, are not contributors to the project they intend to steer.
That is very non-typical in volunteer open-source projects, and frankly I don't
see why would an active developer take direction from such as committee or how
such committee can make decisions on important matters.

Build system question is not trivial, but it can be settled by a sufficiently
motivated group of developers just doing a lot of work. There are other questions
looming for a while that would require wide agreement, and it would be great
for the future of Boost if those who write the code take matters in their hands,
and not rely on committee of (mostly) by-standers to make a closed-door decision.

Thanks,
Volodya