Re: Boost Asset Stewardship Review begins today (3rd Sept)

From: Vinnie Falco (vinnie.falco_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-09-08 16:30:52

On Sun, Sep 8, 2024 at 8:42 AM Klemens Morgenstern via Boost
<boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> It is also quite possible that new steering committee will actually be
> able to steer boost, if it is made up by developers. This would overcome
> issues in boost, because instead of commanding from on-high to migrate
> to CMake, the developers would first put in the work to build consensus
> (by building the thing) before announcing move. It looks to me like this has
> succeeded with CMake thanks to Peter and is in the works for a modularization
> by Rene.

Firstly thank you for your review, and apologies for pressing
Ctrl+ENTER by accident.

It's important to understand that this new Steering Committee, despite
the unfortunate name, is not responsible for "steering Boost:"

"The purpose of the Steering Committee is to make decisions regarding
the use of the Boost assets which require legal ownership by an
individual or legal entity."

This is important enough that we should probably add it to the
Contributor's Guide (Turcan?) under a section "Steering Committee" so
there is no confusion. The legal ownership of assets by a registered
501(c)(3) is necessary for donations to Boost to be tax-deductible.
Here are examples of assets which need legal ownership:

* Domain names
* Trademarks
* Cloud hosting accounts
* Donated funds

Here are examples of things which do not need legal ownership:

* Individual repositories
* The Boost GitHub organization
* Efforts to support CMake
* Efforts to modularize Boost

Boost's current governance model for things that do not require legal
ownership is working out quite well. As you pointed out, CMake is
being supported, and Boost is becoming modular. This all happened
without any Steering Committee and without oversight from the Boost
Foundation. The Alliance proposal only has something to say about the
governance of the assets which require legal ownership, and remains
silent on other things. After all, why mess with what is already
working?

Thanks