Re: In Response to Mr. Falco's June 2024 Letter

From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-06-27 20:28:05

On 27/06/2024 19:45, John Maddock via Boost wrote:
> On 26/06/2024 23:32, Kristen Shaker via Boost wrote:
 >>
>> Recently, we became aware of a letter that was circulated to the Boost
>> developer community. The Boost Foundation Board of Directors have penned
>> the following note in response to that letter.
> 
> I suspect like most folks I've being trying to studiously stay out of 
> the politics.

I think it unfortunate that the Boost Foundation chose to respond with 
yet another escalation. Somebody needs to stop escalating.

> I only note that the new website is now looking very good and certainly 
> deserves to made use of, but I would also hate to see Boost fragment in 
> any way.

I agree with John that now that the new Boost website is pretty much 
done it seems wasteful and unnecessary to throw it away.

Surely there is a way here - given we are all supposed to be adults - to 
get this over the line?

> So... while I'm hoping it's not too late for you all to be sending each 
> other flowers, perhaps it is also a good time to discuss who should hold 
> the boost.org domain?  As long as Beman was alive that was a no-brainer, 
> and the Boost Foundation seemed like a logical successor.  But given 
> that Kristen is only being introduced to us now, perhaps it's focus is 
> now too much elsewhere? If so that would be a shame, and should not be 
> taken as meaning the Alliance would be a better owner either. And it 
> should clearly not be a single person (far too mortal). So it's is a 
> puzzle for sure.

The Boost Foundation and all its many predecessors have had a long 
history of appointing people who would be unknown to most, if not all, 
the Boost library developers.

There were originally good reasons for that - we here us devs did the 
dev work, and the non-dev side of things did the admin, money, training, 
conference, legal and infrastructure stuff. For obvious reasons, there 
was historically not a lot of overlap as most devs don't much care for 
non-dev stuff.

I guess the question becomes has there been a material change, and 
should there be a material change?

How would the devs like the non-dev stuff to be implemented?

My vote would be for the C++ Alliance and Boost Foundation to figure 
something out. After all, they are supposed to be adults and supposedly 
both do - in the end - have similar goals (supporting Boost).

Niall