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

From: Alexander Grund (alexander.grund_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-08-02 08:42:01

Am 02.08.24 um 09:01 schrieb Niall Douglas via Boost:
> The C++ Alliance choice is very much a put your eggs in one basket in
> exchange for proactive funding of dev work until the money runs out. The
> Boost Foundation choice is to continue the benign and sometimes not so
> benign neglect of dev work and the developers themselves.
That and
Am 02.08.24 um 08:03 schrieb Boris Kolpackov via Boost:
> I also hope everyone realizes that this is an existential moment for
> Boost. If option 1 is chosen and some time down the line the Alliance
> runs out of money or decides to shift their focus elsewhere, there will
> be no one to catch the balls in the air, so to speak. It will be very
> hard for a project to go from burning $500K a quarter to zero without
> imploding.
My concern is also the apparent shift from a low-cost, low-maintenance 
(website?)
solution to something seemingly requiring vast amounts of money and effort.
As far as I understood the old website was more or less static HTML 
while the new one requires
a considerable backend to provide dynamic services.
That might not be sustainably long-term or in case someone (in this case 
the C++ Alliance)
steps down and someone else has to volunteer to take over.
But given the BSL license of the website I'm optimistic that we could 
extract a static version of
the new website (without the user interaction parts) to have it run in a 
low-cost environment again.

Especially the announcement of essentially:
"If C++ Alliance takes over (some resources) the Boost foundation will 
become fully uninvolved/unrelated to Boost"
That doesn't sound right.

Am 02.08.24 um 00:02 schrieb Alan de Freitas via Boost:
>>> Regarding option (1), if I understand correctly, the C++ Alliance didn't
>>> ask to control existing assets.
>> They did try to buy the boost.org domain.
> First, and most importantly, that's not what's being voted on.
> The Boost Foundation cannot transfer control of the domain to the C++
> Alliance because they don't own it either.
> There's no point in voting on whether they can transfer ownership of
> something that is not theirs.

As far as I followed the discussion about the domain there seem to exist 
ownership issues.
I don't really know the (legal) implications but it sounds like it needs 
resolving via buying
the domain from the current owner and the Boost Foundation as the 
current "volunteer"
related to things like that didn't do that over the last years so 
someone else stepped up.

I would prefer if the domain is ultimately owned by the Boost Foundation 
as the inactivity
related to those matters at least shows that nothing bad will happen.
I expect the same (or even improvements) when the Alliance owns it but I 
do understand
the sentiments against having essentially a single person controlling it 
and what will happen
to the domain once the Alliance shifts its interest after having bought 
it for a large amount of money.


What other assets are being talked about here? Maybe:

Twitter account(s):
I don't mind the Alliance controlling them as in the past they seemed to 
be the only one with any
activity there and seemingly did a good job.
I would prefer a shared ownership though such that in case of shifted 
interest someone else in the
Boost community can take over without the accounts getting abandoned by 
accident.

Mailing list:
> 3) How does it plan to migrate the mailing lists to a server that its 
> not in imminent danger of falling over? 
That would be the main question. Is it "easy" to transfer the mailing 
list servers?
I don't see any large danger here even if that was controlled by a 
single person, if that is trusted now.
In case that person looses interest someone else can take over or the 
current status-quo can be
re-established.
But similar to the domain this seems to be something requiring action 
and someone has to do that.

Download servers:
This sounds similar to the mailing list: Immediate action was required, 
the Alliance did that and in the
future we can possibly point download links of (at least new) releases 
to another location,
e.g. the current one even if that isn't optimal and if it was barely 
working.
So I don't think this is highly riskily either.

I do like the idea of Joaquin about a new entity consisting of Boost 
developers to primarily/solely support Boost
but I don't think this is viable as Open-Source volunteer work will 
always suffer from financial issues.
But I hope I can be proven wrong here or I'm misunderstanding the 
implications.


So bottom line: If the Boost foundation can and will take appropriate 
steps to solve the most important issues
(that the Alliance is currently solving or intending to solve) I prefer 
they do so.
Otherwise I'm carefully optimistic that things work out with the 
Alliance going forward.
But I, like most devs, don't really want to get into "politics". So I 
just hope for things to work in the end.

Alex