Boost Asset Stewardship Review - Some questions received

From: Glen Fernandes (glen.fernandes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-09-08 11:03:31

The following questions were sent to me about the assets that the C++
Alliance already manages. My replies are included:

1. What are these alternate domains, and how do they differ from boost.io ?

These are domains that the C++ Alliance provided for us when we had
that issue where boost.org was down for a long period of time. At the
time I wasn't sure we would even get boost.org back or what the
timeline for recovery would be. I thought that we should provide a
backup domain that users can be directed to until the issue is
resolved.   The C++ Alliance offered to help and registered
boostlibraries.org and boostcpp.org that point to our website hosting.

boost.io is the domain for people to preview the new website that the
C++ Alliance built, developed by Fastly with content contributions
from Boost users and developers.

2. Why do we need to pay to support downloads if the hosting is free?

The storage costs are minimal but the bandwidth is not. At one point
Boost downloads approached 60TB per month and Bintray couldn't afford
to support us for free. JFrog generously offered to take over.
Recently, our downloads started approaching almost 200TB per month,
and now even JFrog couldn't afford to keep hosting us for free. They
suggested we use a CDN to reduce traffic costs. I reached out to
multiple providers to get a good deal. The best rate was from Fastly
but this was also too expensive. The C++ Alliance offered to handle
these costs and we subscribed to Fastly. Sam Darwin administers our
Fastly account.

For the list discussion, you can start at:
https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2024/01/255654.php

Glen