A Follow Up to My Original Note Re The Future of Boost

From: Kristen Shaker (kristen_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-07-31 20:11:55

Hello Everyone, Thank you for patiently waiting while we had the
opportunity to discuss things.

Many of you have not heard my name before - this is largely because as a
board, we do much of the non - dev work behind the scenes, such as
administrative tasks like paying bills. However, I do want to take this
opportunity to introduce myself quickly and to emphasize that - should
anyone wish to reach out to me directly - I am happy to correspond via
phone or email. My name is Kristen - I spent many years at Google on the
C++ Core Libraries Team. I am heavily involved as an organizer in CppCon
and C++Now. If anyone is curious about what I did at Google, I did give a
talk <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=torqlZnu9Ag> on automated refactoring
and Clang Tidies that you can find on Youtube. My duties as Board Chair
involve sending out meeting agendas, taking meeting notes, and collating
meeting minutes.

It is not our role to lead, but rather to support the Boost project. The
leadership and direction of the Boost project has and should remain with
the Boost Developers. The original Boost Steering Committee home page
articulates its purpose as follows:

“In the Boost community decisions have always been made by consensus and
individual members have shown leadership by stepping forward to do what
they felt needed to be done. Boost has not suffered from a lack of
leadership or volunteer participation.

It is not the role of the Steering Committee to inhibit this kind of
spontaneous leadership and action, which has served Boost and the wider C++
community so well.

On the contrary, it is the role of the Steering Committee to facilitate
community-based leadership and decision making. The role of the Committee
is to be able to commit the organization to specific action either where
funds are required or where consensus cannot be reached, but a decision
must be made.”

We generally encourage any Boost Developer who would like to be more
involved in administrated or organizational decisions to consider joining
the board. We have multiple open board seats. Several Boost Developers are
on the board and additional developers have been invited in the past -
however they have decided against joining due to their distaste for the
type of administrative work we do. We would love to hear more from you.
Please reach out. You can reach all of us at once via
boostfoundationdirectors_at_boost.org. Additionally, if you’d like to attend
one of our board meetings, we regularly host guests.

The C++ Alliance and the Boost Board of Directors have had their
disagreements. Recently, it has become apparent - in particular via their
attempt to purchase the boost.org domain name and the proposed new Boost
Logo - that The Alliance would like to exert a greater sense of ownership
over Boost Library assets. The desired control over assets is what I was
referring to in my original note regarding their attempt to take ownership
over the Libraries.

While the C++ Alliance is a non profit organization, it is wholly funded
and effectively controlled by one individual - Mr. Falco. The Board of
Directors has a stewardship responsibility to Boost and we are wary of a
single individual exerting such a level of control over the Boost
Libraries. The Board has existed for many years and will continue to exist
- as new members are regularly on boarded as tenured ones retire. Given the
structure of the Board and the nature of the volunteer work, we believe
ourselves to be the more permanent entity.

Many have mentioned a desire for cool headed coordination between the two
organizations. I also believed this to be the most advantageous outcome, so
I reached out to Mr. Falco to establish a direct line of communication.
Even now I would characterize our personal relationship as quite positive.

Due to some pre-existing personality clashes, it is now our understanding
that Mr. Falco believes collaboration to be an impossibility. Therefore, a
large part of Mr. Falco’s motivation to acquire the domain name stemmed
from a desire to cut the Board of Directors out of all future decision
making processes. Given that I believed we had made great progress toward
greater collaboration, I was personally gutted by this turn of events.
Accordingly, we did not see a well lit path forward regarding coordination
between the Boost Board and the C++ Alliance.

This decision was in no way meant to minimize the great contributions The
Alliance has made to the Boost Libraries. We do not want to discourage
Alliance members from contributing to Boost. This is fundamentally a
question about the stewardship of the Boost Library Assets.

As mentioned above, the Boost Board of Directors exists largely to
facilitate community based decision making. Accordingly, we feel the most
appropriate thing to do at this juncture would be to let the developers
make a decision on how they would like to proceed regarding what level of
ownership the C++ Alliance should have on Boost Library assets.

Here are what we believe to be the available options.

   1.

   The C++ Alliance assumes control of the Boost assets, including the
   boost.org domain name. The Boost Foundation becomes uninvolved in any
   decisions related to the Boost Libraries.
   2.

   The Boost Foundation continues to be the stewards of the boost.org
   domain name and related assets. New assets that are meant to be associated
   with the Boost Libraries are transferred to the Boost Foundation. In any
   matters related to the Boost Libraries, the Board will abide by any
   decisions made by the developers but will no longer vote themselves on
   issues as they relate to the Boost Libraries unless there truly is no clear
   consensus or path forward.

There was some discussion about the assets being held in a third party non
profit controlled by a subset of the Boost Developers. However, given that
there are already many Boost Developers on the Boost Foundation Board of
Directors, we don’t see this as a meaningful deviation from the status quo.

Also as one final note, many on the mailing list expressed a distaste for
the political nature of this disagreement. Of course, being involved in
political spats is not why you joined Boost! We completely understand this.
Believe me when I say we don’t like dealing with political disagreements
either - no one does. They’re draining and they can distract from an
organization’s larger mission. However, sometimes, they are truly
unavoidable. We’re articulating our thought process here, not to annoy you,
but so every Boost Developer has a say in how things turn out.

Warm Regards,

The Boost Board of Directors

Also here are some answers to some of the more specific questions. There
were a lot of them and I believe some were answered in the preceding
paragraph. Sincerest apologies if I missed a question or two.

Beman Dawes did pass away in 2020. The Boost Foundation did take action
when the domain expired. In fact, Michael Caisse spent many hours on the
phone with support figuring out how to pay for the bill so the website
would be accessible. Additionally, he invested significant time in
procuring the death certificate so we could own the domain. Progress was
being made, albeit slowly.