Re: Option 1: Alliance stewardship of Boost

From: René Ferdinand Rivera Morell (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-08-06 13:51:19

On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 8:34 AM Ion Gaztañaga via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> El 06/08/2024 a las 15:13, Peter Dimov via Boost escribió:
> > Vinnie Falco wrore:
> >> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 5:24 AM Peter Dimov via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]
> >> <mailto:boost_at_[hidden]> > wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>      I don't think this is necessary. Historically, outsourcing our decision
> >> making
> >>      to some external entity has never worked, but even if it did, I don't see
> >> why
> >>      we'd need a registered nonprofit for that.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Someone has to do it since the Foundation will no longer be responsible.
> >
> > Why? The Foundation has never even tried to do this, and the previous such
> > attempt (the infamous CMake announcement) has been a tremendous success.
>
> If the directional decision needs some shared resources, then the
> "entity" somehow needs to participate.
>
> Also, this type of "directional decision when consensus cannot be
> reached" feature comes from the Steering Committee times (which was
> formed in 2011), so we can't say it's not in the Boost tradition:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20141224160315/https://sites.google.com/a/boost.org/steering/
>
> However I agree that the outcome of such "directional decisions" is
> mixed. It failed with CMake, but we can say that SVN to Git migration
> (https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2012/05/193493.php) decision was
> better handled.

The "directional decision" aspect IMO was never successful when it
came to non-infrastructure decisions. I know this contradicts your
examples, so let me explain the examples:

The svn->git transition worked like this:

* A couple of library developers implemented the process for doing the
transition and provided a working model.
* There were discussions on the list about that and the idea of the transition.
* The community agreed to go to the committee and ask for a "thumbs
up" to fully complete the transition.

The cmake incident went like this:

* There were lots of recurring discussions about cmake (the first one
starting during the svn->git transition).
* A couple of library developers started experimenting and
implementing support of cmake for end users.
* A couple of different developers, unaware (AFAIK) of that
preliminary work, asked the Foundation to decide that Boost should
move to cmake. AFAIK they didn't define what moving to cmake meant.
But not sure as all that happened in the isolation of C++Now.

Can you spot the differences?

The successful case was to reaffirm what the community had already
decided. The "unsuccessful" case was to usurp the community process.

-- 
-- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell
-- Don't Assume Anything  -- No Supone Nada
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net