New Website: State of the review / pending issues

From: Ion Gaztañaga (igaztanaga_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-03-04 12:50:54

Hi to all,

We've had quite an intense debate regarding the proposed new website.

I've tried to extract the main technical comments expressed in the ML to 
to determine the current state, fix any misunderstanding and try to 
establish a constructive thread:

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1) Repository: the website code was hosted in cppalliance's github. It 
was transferred to boostorg. I understand this as an improvement as it's 
in the same level as other boost libraries.

2) License: Before transferring it to boostorg, a request to change the 
license to BSL was made. The license change was announced on February 
21, and boost.io says it's BSL, so I guess it's solved now. Source files 
in the repo (https://github.com/boostorg/website-v2) have no copyright 
notice, I don't think it's something that is required, but usually all 
Boost source files have the notice and point to the license.

I'm not a lawyer, but if the site is open source, anyone can fork and 
improve it, and ownership and copyright of the source code follows the 
standard Boost practices (BSL). Anyone with enough technical expertise 
can put up a server with the original or forked code and re-run the site 
in case of cpp.al goes away or if there are disagreements.

3) Privacy Policy: There was a comment about information from third 
parties and the use of Google Analytics, location data... AFAIK there is 
a new privacy policy page (https://www.boost.io/privacy/), which does 
not mention any location data and says a notification will be sent to 
registered users on any change. There is a issue to implement account 
deletion (https://github.com/boostorg/website-v2/issues/965) opened by 
Vinnie, so it should be implemented soon.

4) Terms of use: It was suggested that there needed to be a page like 
"Terms of Use" composed with help of a lawyer. AFAIK there is a new page 
(https://www.boost.io/terms-of-use/) that is much simpler and easier to 
read than the original. I'm not sure if Andrey's comments are addressed 
with the new TOU. Andrey, it's ok now?

5) GDPR: A issue was filed 
(https://github.com/boostorg/website-v2/issues/960), and there was a 
discussion in the ML about not having any analytics tool to avoid cookie 
banners or a couple of analytic tools that were compliant with GDPR. The 
github issue was resolved stating that:

- Google Analytics was removed and Plausible was deployed (e.g. no 
cookies. IP addresses are anonymized with a hash function and rotating
salt value),

- YouTube Embed on the homepage was changed to an external link to the 
video.

I understand that with those changes the site is GDPR-compliant. Is that 
right?

6) Moderation: We had a discussion about how moderation should be 
performed in the site (mainly as an anti-spam mechanism) and how it's 
implemented now in the mailing list (volunteers). My understanding is 
that the new website has some moderation tools so that anyone can submit 
news, etc... and that the same ML method (volunteers blessed in the ML) 
should be used to appoint the moderators for the site (not necessarily 
the same people that moderate the ML).

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I don't know if this summary is accurate, the aim was synthesize several 
ML threads into a single post, certainly I could be wrong on several 
points, please correct me in that case.

Now the next question is: *What's missing technically so that the new 
website can to live?*

If technically we have an agreement or we are near that, then we can:

- Know if there are non-technical aspects that need to be ironed out.
- Know if there is any alternative to be discussed and compared with the 
proposed website. If so, let's put it on the table, review and compare it.
- Schedule a plan so that Boost can have a new modern website soon.

Does this make sense?

Best,

Ion