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Page on the website clarifying Export Status
by Glen Fernandes 15 Sep '24

15 Sep '24

Every now and then (most recently, two days ago), I get a question asking if we have an ECCN in compliance with US export control laws. ECCN is an Export Control Classification Number. (More details at the Bureau of Industry and Security website : http://www.bis.doc.gov/ for anyone interested). We fall under "Not Controlled", so we do not have such a number. (Ion, as a heads up, you will probably start getting these kinds of questions now too). We should probably put this somewhere on our website. FAQ or a page on itself. Any concerns or comments? Glen

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[Asset Stewardship] Andrzej's review
by Andrzej Krzemienski 15 Sep '24

15 Sep '24

Hi Everyone, This is another review in the context of the Boost Asset Stewardship proposal(s). I am not affiliated with either the C++ Alliance or the Boost Foundation, although in the past I talked with the Alliance about the potential compensation for my contributions to Boost, and I represented the Alliance in one WG21 meeting, in Rapperswil. I maintain Boost.Optional library, try to contribute to all Boost reviews, and have managed the review of Boost.SafeNumerics library. I consider myself a Boost Developer. The subject of the review is, which legal organization formally owns the Project's assets, and who actually manages them. But the questions I, as many others, am trying to answer is: * What is going to be the shape and the popularity of Boost libraries? * Where will the funding come from? * What will the Boost community look like? * To what extent will the Boost community be in control of things? The tricky part is that the goal of the Boost Foundation in the past, as well as the future goal of whoever will manage the Boost assets is so that the developers can focus on the development, and need not study the administrative and financial stuff. Yet it is the developers that need to make the decision regarding the administrative and financial stuff now. One thing that I didn't have to pay attention to in the past, and now is becoming clear to me, is that in order to be able to host a host of libraries, test them continuously, improve the infrastructure tools, and build new tools (like the one for documentation), costs huge amounts of money (by my standards). It is my understanding that this cost has been primarily covered by the C++ Alliance. But it is also my understanding that this happened under the Boost Foundation's government, and theoretically the C++ Alliance could continue to make financial and technical contributions under the government of the Boost Foundation. I also hear that this is practically impossible, for reasons that are not all clear to me. I understand that there are fundamental differences in philosophy. The Boost Foundation has the volunteer model, where people devote their private time as their lives permit, and that the C++ Alliance is an organization with huge funds, and the capability to employ people. I also understand that it is a risk for the C++ Alliance to invest huge assets in the Boost project, knowing that ultimately the efforts can be torpedoed by the decisions of the Boost Foundation. I am not saying that this is or has been the case. I am only pointing out the obvious consequences of the mistrust. The Boost Foundation is volunteer-driven. This means that people work on what is deer to their heart, and if something is not deer to anybody's heart, it may not be done, even if important. The volunteers can only put as much effort to their work as their private life permits. This means sometimes they have to give up. The effect might be that a volunteer-based organization may appear unreliable. On the other hand, volunteer work inspires more volunteers. I was surprised to find that the Boost Foundation's, as it is today, primary goal is not to support Boost's interests: it supports many initiatives, Boost being one of them. I was misled by the name. People, including myself, have pointed out that the support for the Beman project is somehow in conflict with supporting Boost. But having thought more about it, I no longer feel this way. I am now inclined to think that the Beman project is the best thing that could happen to minimize the damage caused by the current process of standardizing libraries in WG21. So if there is any glitch in the Boost Foundation, it is the support for some proceedings in WG21. This is because WG21 innovates and experiments, instead of standardising the things that work. I think the Boost Foundation has been doing a good job at steering Boost. If people feel that "they are doing nothing", this might be the indication of the job done right: Boost is rolling, the lights are on, the Foundation is not getting in the way of the developers. Most of the job done is invisible. The question is, can we still improve if we adopt the Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement from the Alliance. I understand that the Agreement gives the Alliance the sense of stability: that the efforts that cost years and millions will be integrated. This would help secure the development of essential components that we need: * the modularization * the platform for communication that is open for the young, while not discriminating the old (like myself) * a tool that helps produce documentation. Except for the first, I do not think they can be achieved without a substantial financial effort. Risks: * With this huge and single source of income, we will be looking more like a company than a volunteer organization. * It is likely that because of this Boost will not attract new volunteers * It is likely that no-one else will feel the need to sponsor Boost. But even if some of these risks were to materialize, the value of having a tool for writing documentation for C++ libraries is so huge: it goes beyond Boost. My concern from a different level is that after all the chaotic and unpleasant (mis)communication in the Mailing List, I am left with the impression that the C++ Alliance is ready to break the established rules in order to achieve the goals. This may be a deeply unfair statement, but I can't help it: this is what the shreds of information that I receive suggest. The proposed Agreement attempts to secure the Boost project against the situation of an irresolvable conflict, but no agreement can secure your interests when the agreements are not respected. During this review period I have heard late but honest explanations from the Boost Foundation members that explain their actions and show their motivation, and I find them credible. I do not believe I have heard the account from the C++ Alliance that would help understand what motivated the organization to act the way they did. One last concern is that I am not comfortable with the fact that the proposed Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement re-uses the term "Steering Committee". As indicated in other messages, the Boost Foundation *is* the Steering Committee, or rather continues the tradition of the Steering Committee with the same people onboard (not all, obviously), and with the same ideals. In order to honour them and in appreciation of their work, I think the new setup should not intercept this name. Regarding the question of attracting or repelling new contributors, I find it hard to believe that the enforced Code of Conduct could have a significant impact on the results. In my opinion, what could have a bigger impact is when Boost becomes modular, people can afford to use it more in more contexts, appreciate it more, and some of them decide to contribute. Regarding the Foundation's counter-proposal. I do not find anything material in it. I read it as "let's leave the things as they are, but let's enforce the CoC and increase transparency and efficiency". As I said, I cannot see how the enforced CoC could make a substantial difference. Regarding the efficiency and transparency, I do not find anything substantially wrong with them today: they are good enough. Today we are facing a crisis, but other than that I think the Boost Foundation is doing a good job. The Boost Foundation also mentions the modularization and the new communication platform, but even the Foundation members admit they do not believe that making such big projects would work with the Boost's consensus-based philosophy. In closing, I would like to say that I am grateful to the members of both the C++ Alliance and the Boost Foundation for your contributions to the Boost project and community. I have certainly benefited from your work, in many ways. I recommend accepting the Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement from the C++ Alliance, as I see the potential in it to significantly improve the situation of Boost, and other good libraries out there (I mean the new documentation tool), while recognizing that this is a risky decision. Regards, &rzej;

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Boost Asset Stewardship Review from Ruben
by Ruben Perez 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

DISCLAIMER: I'm a C++ Alliance employee Hi all, I'm the author and current maintainer of Boost.MySQL. I'd first like to thank both the Boost Foundation and the C++ Alliance for their contributions and efforts, especially when done in their free time. On the technical side, I particularly appreciate the infrastructure contributions the C++ Alliance has made. The Drone CI has been really important for me even when I was a volunteer, as it's fast and supports Windows Docker images. I also appreciate their efforts regarding documentation, as I share the need to update Boost in this aspect. Of course, their recent sponsorship regarding Boost.MySQL has allowed me to develop the library much further than my otherwise scarce free time would have allowed me. I think the C++Al proposal is good, as it will allow other authors like me to also benefit from infrastructure improvements like the ones I mentioned. C++Al people are pretty technically enthusiastic, which I also like. The concern of letting too much of Boost's decision power in a single organization's hands seems legit. However, the proposal seems to take this into account, proposing several measures to mitigate the risk, with a Steering Committee composed of respected Boost developers. I also support adding Peter and Glen to the committee. I also appreciate the contributions that the Boost Foundation members have made to Boost, and would like to thank them for that. I'd like to echo a point made by others in the mailing list throughout this discussion and also somewhat reflected in The Boost Foundation's proposal, about mailing list friendliness to newcomers. When I first reached out to evaluate the potential usefulness of what would become Boost.MySQL (https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost//2020/03/248301.php) I received a couple of really discouraging comments, which almost made me abandon the idea. These comments were based on the (somehow understandable) misconception that my library was a wrapper around the official C API. Thanks to other people's support (Richard, Chris, Vinnie and some others, IIRC) I managed to move forward. But it could have not been the case. As a community, we could try to improve instances of this to make things better for newcomers. That said, I think the C++ Alliance proposal moves in the right direction, so I vote to ACCEPT it. Thanks, Ruben.

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The Future of Boost Governance
by Dave Abrahams 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

I'm writing to represent the spirit in which Boost was founded and in which we ran it, as a community, up until 2013. I realize the review is nominally about asset stewardship, but IIUC the more fundamental change being discussed is about governance, not who holds Boost's property. Before I moved on to other things, I participated in setting up a steering committee that was supposed to step in and make important decisions when Boost's default "community-based leadership and decision making" process got stuck or was otherwise inadequate. That body, I gather, evolved into the Foundation board. For some purposes, that governance structure has worked, but when it comes to managing Boost's assets, it seems the ball was dropped, and the Foundation did not self-correct. Therefore, I very much understand why one might want to transfer Boost governance to an organization with more apparent energy. All that said I am deeply concerned about recent actions by the C++ Alliance. Please correct me if I'm misinformed about any of this, because as I've said I've been out of the loop. It is my understanding that the Alliance did not communicate to the Foundation or publicize its efforts to gain control of the boost.org <http://boost.org/> domain name. Effective or not, the Foundation is the nominal governing body for Boost, and coordination with the Foundation would have been the appropriate, aboveboard course to take. It is my understanding that despite an agreement to coordinate the launch of a new Boost website with the Foundation board, the Alliance decided to launch boost.io <http://boost.io/> in parallel with boost.org <http://boost.org/>. That move is problematic for all the same reasons. It also creates confusion for the user community about where the real Boost is. These aggressive and unilateral actions seem to be at odds with the spirit of Boost and to be harmful to the coherence of its community. IMO it's very much to the Foundation's credit that they did not respond in kind, but instead opened a discussion about Boost's future governance and offered to abide by the community's decision. That is what I'd expect from a group that truly had Boost's interests at heart. All that is great but it does seem very wrong that the conversation should be prompted by actions like the above, and for me, any outcome that transfers Boost governance to the instigators of those actions compounds the problem. It saddens me greatly that a rift exists between the Alliance and the Foundation, because the energy and commitment of the Alliance members is admirable, and communication here on the mailing list looks like it has been productive. My ideal outcome would be to repair whatever is needed to make the Foundation work as a governing body, and to repair the relationships so that Alliance members can continue to make great technical contributions without feeling like the Foundation is holding up their progress. I'm sure that would be asking a great deal of the participants on both sides, but that's what I'd like. It seems to me any correctives that would result from a governance transition could equally well be applied to the Foundation itself. - Dave

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Domain Transfer Update
by Kristen Shaker 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Hello, I wanted to give everyone an update regarding what is happening with the boost.org domain. We are working with the lawyer representing the Dawes estate to transfer control. However, Beman Dawes was the only one with the credentials, and the transfer process without them is onerous. It may take many months. We intend to continue to provide updates. Warm Regards, Kristen

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Asset Stewardship Review - Halfway mark
by Glen Fernandes 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

Everyone, We are halfway through the review period. Thank you to everyone that has participated so far, even if you haven't contributed a review yet. If anyone has yet to submit a review because they are unsure of how to format it, or what you can contribute, hopefully the responses thus far have helped inform that. If not, then I would suggest starting with a vote and your reason, and we can elicit additional information with follow up questions. So far, nobody that has sent me any questions or feedback privately, has expressed that they would like to post a review but don't know how. I have yet to compose (or source) answers to the last set of questions I received, but I will do that this Saturday. Glen

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Asset Stewardship Review
by Vladimir Prus 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

Hi, I vote for the C++ Alliance proposal. Right now, my contribution to Boost is limited to accepting small PRs for the program_options library, I don't expect to be very active in the future, so my vote should be suitably discounted. On the other hand, I wrote one library, contributed changes for some others, and worked on building/testing infrastructure, so probably know something. I have no affiliation with either party, though I criticized Boost Foundation before. Many open-source projects have solved the matter of asset management and financial support without much drama. For example, there is the LLVM foundation ( (https://foundation.llvm.org/) which pays for infra, and sponsors developer meetings. There are 9 people on the board, and their bios all mention LLVM contributions. There is a public process to nominate new board members candidates (the current board votes on them, though). The activity of the foundation is fairly visible. There's also the Apache Foundation (https://www.apache.org/) It hosts a lot of projects, and committers run each one. Matters are resolved by committer vote, new committers are added by vote, and inactive members lose their commit/vote privileges. The foundation itself provides resources, like magic garden gnomes. Probably, with a bit more goodwill and introspection, we could have worked out the details and reached the level of those examples. But, we saw divorce paperwork sent in public, and both parties have a long list of grievances, so here we are, deciding who gets the custody. Boost Foundation, in my opinion, has a real identity and credibility crisis. Originally, in the steering committee times, it consisted of project founders, who were active in the project, and contributed lots of hours and probably personal money, while preferring consensus for all decisions. It gradually changed, and these days, Boost Foundation has largely checked out and consists mostly of people privileged enough to travel to Aspen and other conferences. Still, it occasionally issues decrees for the project to follow. Consider the recent events. There was a decree to stop working with a large sponsor. Per meeting notes, 7 people met to make the decision. I see only 2 with obvious connections to the project. Kristen's post with the announcement was her first-ever post to the list. The board members were not nominated, voted, or announced on the list. Despite many raised questions, foundation members had no timely answers. Even during this crisis, most members did not say anything. And then, just today, one member has it was not a degree, but a recommendation and the alliance can still sponsor everything. That's a clear failure. Maybe it would be OK if the foundation provided vast resources, and let developers decide, Apache-style. But right now it's only paying for the webserver. (I am unsure whether that's the foundation, as opposed to a generous foundation member using personal funds). There are no IT resources to keep the server up-to-date, no money to pay for CI/CD and downloads, and official filings merely say "less than $50K of income per year"). Finally, the fact that boost.org domain ownership remains unresolved even after it already expired couple years ago illustrates the lack of time/interest. The foundation's proposal is weak, brief, and seems hastily written. It does not acknowledge or address the issues above. There's no significant revamp of the board, there's no plan to to procure funding, and there's no plan to obtain IT resources. Instead, it proposes a few other things that might be good. However, those things can be decided on the list. It does not require that the foundation holds the assets. Finally, the proposal does not mention the "Beman Project" at all. It's not clear how the foundation plans to support the Boost project, while simultaneously working on an almost identical one. (I wonder if this proposal was intentionally written to lose, and move on) The C++ Alliance, organizationally, is not much better. Its board is Vinnie and his friends. As an extra plot twist, one member of the alliance board was previously on the foundation's board, and at least partially responsible for the current situation. But, things take a dramatic turn after that. The alliance is way more active in the project. Two board members are active contributors. It employs other contributors. There are quarterly blog posts from employers explaining what they have done. There are "transparency reports" about overall activity. That's easily 10x more transparency. They also have considerable financial resources. The last IRS filing claims over $2M per year. There are full-time employees and there is no doubt that they can handle Boost's relatively simple infrastructure. The alliance proposal is fairly smart. It proposed essentially the Apache model. In turn, that means we no longer have to be concerned about the alliance's board - the arrangement lets committers decide everything, while infrastructure just magically works. I do, of course, have some concerns about the alliance. It is sponsored by Vinnie himself, while the foundations I mentioned above have more diverse income sources. Also, some people might consider voting for the alliance as supporting Vinnie personally, or even taking his side in some outside-of-Boost conflicts. (Obviously, it's not). Alliance, at times, has too much money. I doubt that a "modern logo" is at all necessary, seems like a distraction. The estimated costs for the new, still essentially static, website would seem sufficient to run a few AI startups. I am worried that any change in the financial situation will leave us with way too expensive infrastructure. Like, the current server can be sponsored by literally a single developer. The "new website", at $10K per year, is not so much. At the end of the day, I don't see any choice. The Boost Foundation, as an organization, and as individual board members, made a lot of contributions, but as of 2024, there appears to be little financial and human resources, and no willingness to work with the developers. The C++ Alliance, on the other hand, already pays most of the bills and has proposed a schema that will empower the developers. I think others already commented on the details of the agreement. My only proposal/condition is that the members of the new Boost Steering Committee be provided with access to all relevant IT resources (DNS registrar, DNS hosting, any cloud providers) and that they meet with the alliance periodically, like twice per year, and verify that all the access still works. We want to make sure that in the case of any emergency, we're prepared. Thanks, -- Vladimir Prus http://vladimirprus.com

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Boost Asset Stewardship Review from Andrey
by Andrey Semashev 12 Sep '24

12 Sep '24

[Warning! Long post ahead!] Hi, This is my review of Boost asset stewardship proposals from The Boost Foundation (the current governing organization) and The C++ Alliance. I. Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? ================================================== Not particularly. Although I can probably consider myself an old-timer (I think, I joined the mailing list back in 2007; at least my archive dates back that far), I have never been privy to Boost infrastructure and management details. The only information I know is what was published on the mailing list (ML). I have also never managed a company or organization outside Boost. I am neither a lawyer nor financist, and English is not my native language, so I may misunderstand some of the information given in the proposals. Sorry if that's the case. However, as a Boost library maintainer and user, I am interested in the Boost project's bright future. Specifically, the future where I'd be willing to continue using and contributing to Boost. While this may sound selfish, my hope is that my contributions will also make Boost more useful to others. So, my review will be written mostly from a maintainer's and user's perspective rather than someone knowledgeable in the problem domain, which is primarily asset management and legal relations between organizations. I am not affiliated with The C++ Alliance or The Boost Foundation. II. The problem statement ========================= In order to evaluate the proposals, I will first state the problem, as I understand it. Then, I will see how each of the proposals addresses it. I will separate the problem description into three aspects: 1. Boost popularity decline. As stated in both proposal documents, Boost popularity has declined in recent years, based on metrics such as the number of posts in the ML, the number of submitted libraries or the number of git commits per year. The C++ Alliance proposal provides the relevant data in Appendix 2. My personal perspective is that *volunteer participation* in Boost is indeed reducing. Here, by volunteers I mean contributors that are not staffed by The C++ Alliance and contribute their work independently. It appears like Boost "went out of fashion" and going though a Boost review is too difficult and time consuming for newcomers, and so they are picking easier alternatives to publish their code and ideas and gain recognition. In doing so, new developers seem to be willing to trade the quality of their solutions for popularity and quick gains. I'm not entirely convinced that this lack of participation is caused by how modern our website looks or how often we post news items on social media. While these things do matter, I suspect the fundamental issue is that newer developers simply don't want to bother with the review process and responsibly maintaining code afterwards for various reasons. I find this tendency extremely sad and worrying, even more so since it is not unique to Boost. However, I do not think we can say that Boost *usage* is declining. From the data presented in The C++ Alliance proposal, it looks like the number of Boost downloads is growing, so much so we had to contract a CDN provider to serve them, as well as introduce GitHub downloads. Athough I imagine large portion of these downloads are automated (e.g. CI jobs), even that interpretation speaks in favor of a growing user base (more CI jobs probably means more projects are using Boost). I suppose, it should not be surprising that there are more users than contributors, but I still think it is worth pointing out that Boost popularity is not declining, as it may appear from some online forum comments. 2. Boost asset management. There were several instances of poor management of Boost assets, such as: - The boost.org domain, which was nearly lost to an auction. - The website. The current website is mostly unmaintained, and there is no (public) plan of modernizing it. The new proposed website is rejected by The Boost Foundation and remains "unofficial" at boost.io. - Social media accounts. The official @Boost_Libraries account on X is dormant, and the access to it is restricted from members of The C++ Alliance who have volunteered to maintain its activity. Which resulted in creation of a separate, "unofficial" @BoostLibraries account. - The wowbagger server that is running the current website and mailing lists is outdated and have seen hardware failures that resulted in data loss (as noted in The C++ Alliance proposal). The software stack on the server is also outdated and cannot be easily updated. - The Boost logo, for which, apparently, The Boost Foundation doesn't hold the appropriate license. The duplicate website and X account are especially bad for users, as it causes confusion as to which one is genuine and the true source of information. They are also very similarly named, so much so that one might question their legitimacy. I'd like to point out that the issues with Boost downloads, when we exceeded the free downloads quota, were largely solved with help of The C++ Alliance and The Boost Foundation (specifically, I believe, Sam Darwin and Glen Fernandes). This is an example when the two organizations (or perhaps, individuals thereof) have collaborated to solve the immediate problem. Many thanks to everyone involved. 3. Lack of communication with asset management body. I think, many of Boost community were unaware of the asset management issues listed above until recent discussions on the ML. I personally did not know about the issues with boost.org, data loss on wowbagger and licensing issues for the logo until recently. I believe, some of these issues could have been solved sooner if they were communicated on the ML by The Boost Foundation. Furthermore, even after the issues have become known, there were, depending on the specific asset, little to no communication from The Boost Foundation as to (a) whether the problem is real and (b) what is the proposed plan on addressing it. Basically, The Boost Foundation took a reactive stance in regards to The C++ Alliance actions that it (the Foundation) perceived as hostile. III. Evaluation of The Boost Foundation proposal ================================================ My overall impression of the proposal is that it lacks substance and in some ways is not aligned with Boost traditions. Following is my analysis of how the proposal tackles the stated problem. 1. Boost popularity decline. A significant portion of the proposal is titled "Our Community Values". I'd like to note that this seems to implicate that these values are those of the Boost project community rather than those of The Boost Foundation. This is further reinforced by the contents of the "What we propose" section, which stem from these stated values. I do not believe this implication is correct. In fact, I do not see these values listed anywhere on the www.boost.org website or the "Proposal for a C++ Library Repository Web Site" (https://www.boost.org/users/proposal.pdf) While some of the values listed in the proposal are aligned with the spirit of the Boost project, others are not. In particular, the "Inclusivity" section discusses representation of women in The C++ Alliance staff and the proposed Steering Committee. This is entirely irrelevant for the purpose of Boost asset management and looks like a cheap stab at the opponent. The document then goes on to propose to "make an active effort to get those historically underrepresented to participate". I think, this is an entirely wrong approach to the problem. Boost has never been about representation of women, or any other social category for that matter. The relevant portions of our guidelines are this: A guiding principal is to encourage wide participation and interaction. Get people involved, in newsgroups, mailing lists, as peer reviewers, library contributors and maintainers, and as moderators and webmasters. And, of course, as library users. (https://www.boost.org/users/proposal.pdf) Boost libraries are intended to be widely useful, and usable across a broad spectrum of applications. The Boost license encourages the use of Boost libraries for all users with minimal restrictions. [...] Boost welcomes and thrives on participation from a variety of individuals and organizations. (https://www.boost.org/) Notice that nowhere in these lines specific social groups are mentioned. I'd like to think this is intentional. The only criteria mentioned is talented people willing to contribute their time, ideas, code and effort to various areas of Boost, an open and widely useful collection of C++ libraries. Martians included. As soon as you substitute this criteria of technical merit with inclusivity/representation agenda, you are taking away from the technical quality of the community and bringing in unhealthy atmosphere of inequality. Ultimately, this harms the project as a whole. I find this unacceptable. Another related suggestion made in the proposal is introduction and enforcement of "a strong code of conduct". Also, "make an active effort to improve behavior on the mailing list". The proposal does not go into details as to what the "strong code of conduct" might look like, or in what way the behavior on the mailing list needs to be improved, but given the inclusivity agenda I have to make some uncomfortable assumptions. Specifically, that the suggested code of conduct is intended to promote the agenda and could potentially be used to prosecute those who disagree. I know I have commented on this topic earlier, but I feel compelled to make this part of my review. I find this sort of code of conduct, as well as using it as leverage on people unacceptable. I do not want to see Boost descending into curating people's opinions (let alone their behavior outside Boost), segregation, preferentialism and political infights. I think, our current discussion policy strikes a good balance between defining what's considered unacceptable behavior and leaving enough freedom to keep the discussions vibrant and productive. I don't remember a case when we needed something more strict, and I don't remember us needing to enforce it onto someone either. Lastly in this problem category is the suggestion to "consider adopting a modern communication platform, such as discourse". There was a discussion on this topic on the ML (unfortunately, threading was broken at the time, but you can search by "Replacing the ML with a forum" in the title), which showed a strong preference for ML in the community. I do not think switching to a web forum solution, especially one that does not support threading, would be in the best interest of the community. It may attract more new users, but it will also push away active developers. New users are not necessarily going to replace the maintainers who are going to leave. Personally, I'm not seeing myself switching to a web forum. If the suggestion is not to switch but to bring up a forum *in addition* to the ML, this is also not a good solution, IMO. If the two platforms are independent from each other, this will result in community fragmentation, which I would like to avoid. In particular, this would make review discussions problematic, assuming the review would happen both on forum and ML. I'm not against a forum interface per se, but I think it should integrate with the ML, so that people using both interfaces are able to communicate with each other transparently. Which is something similar to what The C++ Alliance is working on. 2. Boost asset management. I feel that this aspect of the stated problem is not addressed by the proposal nearly at all. Which is disappointing, since I was hoping that this aspect would receive the most attention of The Boost Foundation given the recent communications on the ML and direct requests from the community. The proposal mostly states that The Boost Foundation retains ownership of the assets and undergoes internal organizational changes so that each asset is associated with a given member of the Foundation. While personal responsibility and staff rotation are good, this doesn't really address the issues at hand. For example, what is the proposed resolution with the website? The logo? The wowbagger server? And so on. These questions remain unanswered. 3. Lack of communication with asset management body. Out of the three problem aspects, I got the most positive impression on this one from the proposal. I do like the idea of introducing key officers on the ML, as well as open board meetings. On the latter, I would like to amend so that online attendance should be possible, as not everyone lives near the location of the board headquarter, or wherever the meeting takes place. I would also like to see periodic reports on the ML (e.g. once a quarter) on what was done in the given period, what are the current problems, who is working on them, what was done and what is the plan going forward. I would like to see more active responses from The Boost Foundation on direct requests from the community. Perhaps, set up a public issue tracker so that people are able to report problems and track their progress. This might be as simple as a GitHub project with an issue tracker and a task list (https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/working-with-advan…) 4. Other thoughts. The proposal suggests "Complete the CMake migration". While I'm not opposed to continued work on CMake support, I do not think it is The Boost Foundation's role to declare tasks like this. It is a decision made by the Boost community, and the work is done by library maintainers. Same for "Consider putting the monolithic distribution in maintenance mode and require new libraries to be self contained". This is not a decision to be made by The Boost Foundation; it must be discussed on the ML first. To this end, I do not think requiring all new libraries to be self-contained (that is, not have any dependencies) is realistic or a worthy goal to pursuit anyway. IV. Evaluation of The C++ Alliance proposal =========================================== My overall impression is that The C++ Alliance proposal is more substantial and comprehensive, which I like. 1. Boost popularity decline. The proposal describes the work that The C++ Alliance has been doing to improve participation in the project. I'm assuming, the proposal implies that the work will continue if the proposal is accepted. In particular, these items were mentioned: - The new, "refreshed" website - A more active X account, with a new image art design - A C++ Slack workspace, which is used for Boost-related chat-style communications - Updated mailman+hyperkitty ML backend in development which will offer a web forum-like interface for the ML - Marketing materials and merchandise distributed on CppCon Those are all very welcome endeavors, especially those which improve accessibility and communication between people. I think, improved communication is a key element of improving public image of Boost and bringing in new contributors - perhaps, more important than the refreshed "looks". As I said in the problem statement section, I think the most deterring factor for potential library contributors is the necessity to undergo a Boost review and then maintain the submitted library. Some developers who target the C++ standard perceive Boost as an unnecessary effort that can be avoided. I'm not sure the above measures will help overcome this perception, but at least they should make Boost more accessible to contributors offering help in other ways, e.g. by providing user feedback and patches. I think, the only party who can improve the situation with the straight-to-standard libraries is WG21, which is out of our hands. What Boost can do is maintain the high quality bar, even if it means less volunteers than we'd like. Besides attracting more volunteers, The C++ Alliance is sponsoring development and employ engineers working on Boost. On one hand, this makes things done and provides another steady flow of contributions, especially in the unpopular areas, like documentation updates. On the other hand, Boost is increasingly becoming controlled by The C++ Alliance, where the majority of roles are fulfilled by the Alliance's employees. There is a saying in my country that can be translated as "the one who dines a girl also dances her", which basically means the one who does the work should also reap the benefits from it. I suppose, it's fitting, but I would still prefer Boost to remain an independent project. This is actually my biggest concern with The C++ Alliance proposal - it further increases control of the Alliance over Boost. 2. Boost asset management. The core of the proposal is to transfer ownership of the Boost assets to The C++ Alliance, to be managed on behalf of the newly created Steering Committee, which is supposed to be formed from Boost community members. In the past, The C++ Alliance have demonstrated that they are willing and able to solve issues with Boost infrastructure and assets. Specifically, to address the aging website, a new one was (and still is) developed, to fix archive downloads a CDN provider was contracted and so on. And although I have reservations about the new logo usage terms and looks, it also exists as a solution to the licensing issues with the old logo. So clearly, this demonstrates that The C++ Alliance is capable of maintaining Boost assets in good condition. However, The C++ Alliance is still an external entity, which is funded by a single individual, Vinnie Falco. This poses risks associated with possible funding issues and changing directional vision for The C++ Alliance and by extension, Boost. The first risk may be mitigated by finding other sources of income, such as donations and merchandise distribution, which, I believe, was the source of funding until now, with The Boost Foundation. The second risk is supposed to be mitigated by introduction of the new Steering Committee, which should represent the Boost project community and define "the technical, artistic and philanthropic direction" of the project. This last part I would like to investigate further. In the Fiscal Sponsorship Agreement (FSA) draft in Appendix 1 of the proposal, two Committees are mentioned. The Current Committee, as I understand it, is sort of a bootstrap for the Steering Committee, and its members are listed in the FSA. I am not sure why the Current Committee is needed, and why is it not possible to form the Steering Committee from the start and only reference it in the FSA. Maybe there's some legal reason to it that I'm not aware of, but it looks like a superfluous entity to me. Another point is that in the list of members of the Current Committee, two of the three members are also members of The C++ Alliance. The FSA does not outline the decision making process in the Current Committee, but strangely does so for the Steering Committee: All decisions of the Steering Committee shall be made by simple majority. This raises two issues. First, if the Current Committee's decision making process is the same then The C++ Alliance has the majority vote in the Committee. I'm not questioning the integrity of the proposed members of the Current Committee, I have nothing but respect for each of the individuals, but I would still prefer if The C++ Alliance didn't have the deciding majority on the Committee. Someone on the ML proposed to include Glen Fernandes and Peter Dimov in the Current Committee, and I support this nomination. Furthermore, I would like the similar problem with the Steering Committee to be mitigated as well. One option is to amend the mechanism for picking members to restrict The C++ Alliance presence in the Committee to less than majority of members. Another option might be to involve the community in the member election, e.g. by holding a vote for candidates. In any case, the goal is to ensure that the Steering Committee represents the Boost project community rather than The C++ Alliance. The second issue is that I find it surprising that FSA is defining the decision making process in the Steering Committee in the first place. It would seem to me that the Steering Committee should have its own bylaws and should decide on how it operates internally, and that has nothing to do with FSA. As long as the Steering Committee's decisions go in line with the FSA, it should not matter how these decisions are made. I'd like to note that I have no preference for the Steering Committee's decision making process; my issue is not with the "by simple majority" part. Although there should be a tie breaker, if the number of members is even. Another thing that bothers me is that The C++ Alliance reserves the right to appoint members of the Steering Committee to bring its size up to three members. I realize that this is supposed to be an emergency plan of sorts, but it seems wrong that The C++ Alliance is making the pick. It would seem, the self-preservation plan should be in the Steering Committee's bylaws, and The C++ Alliance should not be acting in its place. Lastly on this topic, the last part of this sentence seems controversial: Authority to manage the technical, artistic and philanthropic direction of the Project and the program activities of the Project is delegated to the Steering Committee as defined in §6, subject at all times to the direction and control of Alliance’s Board of Directors. It might be my poor understanding of the legal wording, but it looks like this suggests that the Steering Committee is operating under control of The C++ Alliance's Board, which contradicts with the first part of the sentence. Either the Committee decides on the Project's direction, or it is controlled by the Alliance and then it is the Alliance who actually decides on the Project direction. My preference would be the former, in which case this sentence should probably be amended. I would like to comment on the section 8 of the FSA, "Termination". I'm not familiar with the US laws, but do the timeouts for searching for a Successor allow for registering a new 501(c)(3) entity for the purpose of passing the assets to it? The way the section 8.d "Termination Without a Successor" is phrased implies that the assets could potentially be destroyed or otherwise made permanently unavailable to the Project. I'm wondering if there is a better solution, like creating a new non-profit for the purpose of passing it the assets. I admit I'm completely clueless in this domain, I'm just looking if the Termination terms could be improved for Boost. Especially, in the case if The C++ Alliance is no longer able to fulfill its sponsorship. 3. Lack of communication with asset management body. The C++ Alliance members already post periodic reports about the Alliance's activity, and I hope this initiative will continue if the proposal is accepted. Alliance's members are also active on the ML, which is very welcome. So, in the communication department The C++ Alliance has a good track record already. One instance where the communication did fail was the attempt to purchase the boost.org domain from the Dawes estate. I feel, this matter could have been handled better. At the very least, the community could have been made aware of the situation with the domain name and the planned resolution. I can understand how this buyout attempt could be interpreted as a hostile action by The Boost Foundation, and The C++ Alliance (and Vinnie Falco in particular) should have known this would be the outcome. If the proposal is accepted, I would like to ask the Alliance to be transparent about their planned and ongoing activities wrt. Boost assets to avoid situations like this in the future. Doing things like buying the domain name behind everyone's back is not acceptable. In fact, this should be straight prohibited by the terms of FSA, as the Alliance is supposed to act on behalf of the Steering Committee when it comes to Boost assets. Lastly, the suggestion I made in The Boost Foundation proposal review regarding GitHub tasks and issue tracker might be relevant here as well. V. Conclusion ============= Given that The Boost Foundation proposal lacks substance on the asset management part, leaving many questions unanswered, and is taking what I consider a completely unacceptable direction on the community engagement front, I vote to REJECT The Boost Foundation proposal. I understand there likely won't be a second round of review, but if there was, I would have liked to see a more constructive proposal that is more focused on the problems at hand and proposed concrete solutions for them. Where the opponent offers a solution, you should be offering yours instead of stabbing the opponent. I find The C++ Alliance proposal closer to what I would like to see in Boost. On The C++ Alliance proposal I vote ACCEPT WITH CONDITIONS with a single condition being to ensure that the newly created Steering Committee is able to make decisions and operate independently from any possible leverage from The C++ Alliance, in the interests of the Boost project. The specific concerns I have on this front are described in the proposal review. I'd like to thank The Boost Foundation and The C++ Alliance for putting forth their proposals. I'm sure they put a lot of work in it. And I'd like to thank Glen Fernandes for managing this review, which surely is a difficult and responsible task. And if you read this far, thanks for your time and patience. :)

4 6

A history of the Boost Foundation
by Zach Laine 11 Sep '24

11 Sep '24

Dave Abrahams and Beman Dawes put up the initial money for BoostCon (which has since been renamed to C++Now) in 2007 (or maybe 2006?). This was something of a risk, since it was not certain how many people would show up. It turns out that the conference covered those costs, but they were still personally responsible for the conference if they wanted to put it on again the next year, or the year after. Beman had the idea that there should be an independent legal entity for this, rather than two individual people. I forget the exact chronology, but pretty early on in the conference history, we ended up with The Boost Steering Committee, under the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC). That is, we called it "The Boost Steering Committee", but there was no such legal entity. The legal entity that represented the BoostCon conference and Boost in general was SFC. In terms of legal entities, "The Boost Project", or "The Boost Steering Committee" was just a single division within SFC. This is something they reminded us of from time to time. At the time, Boost had no real expenses. The "wowbagger" server that we use to host the (now, legacy) website, and on which the releases are built, was hosted at Indiana University. The downloads of the build Boost releases were hosted at Sourceforge (I think; anyway, wherever it was, it was free). They later moved to other places, ending up finally at JFrog. They're no longer hosted for free -- see below. BoostCon made more money than it spent for a lot of years. It accumulated some reserves, and people would sometimes ruminate on what we might spend all that sweet, sweet cash on. No large expenditures were ever taken on though. The SFC started very small. We were project #3 I think (maybe #2? something like that). Over a few years, it took on more and more projects, until Boost was one of 20 or 25 SFC projects (again, I don't remember the exact numbers). SFC had a small staff then, and probably still does. As they grew, it became increasingly difficult to get anything done. They were overworked and understaffed, so this is not some failure on the part of the SFC so much as a logistical inevitability. One problem we had was getting them to pay vendors for services used by the conference. IOW, we would use some service, the vendor would send us a bill, and then we would send SFC like a thousand emails trying to get them to pay the bill. It was a nightmare to deal with. Jon Kalb, who was the conference chair at the time, asked the Steering Committee if we'd be open to breaking free of SFC, and forming our own non-profit organization -- a separate legal entity. Everyone agreed, Jon did a bunch of research and paperwork (thanks again, Jon!) and we formed a new 501(c)(3) US corporation called The Boost Foundation. This is why the Steering-Committee-under-SFC became the Boost Foundation Board. This is also why the name changed -- we needed a new name for the new legal entity. There was no secret agenda; there was no smoke-filled room. There was, however, pragmatism. Sometime around then -- once more, I don't remember the exact timeline -- we started losing all our free stuff. Someone at Indiana University realized that randos (that's us, Boost) were running a whole server in their lab, and asked us to remove it. So then we had to pay for hosting wowbagger. Some time later, the download hosts stopped giving away bandwidth for free as well. No problem, right? The conference makes money, Boost now needs money, so let's use the conference money for the Boost expenses that now have to be paid. (Note that this is something the SC/Board took on as it came up; it was not part of the original mission of the SC/Board, because there were no significant Boost infrastructure expenses previously.) The problem is that the conference makes less and less every year, due to a combination of changes in the way the venue charges (it all went up a lot), inflation, the expenses from the covid-cancelled year, etc. During all this, we kept things running as best we could. Eventually, the downloads became too expensive, and the C++ Alliance offered to pay for those. So now they do. The Foundation only pays for hosting wowbagger right now. Hopefully that sets the stage. To me, the important take-away is that the Foundation has tried to "keep the lights on" as I like to say, without bothering anyone on the list about it. The Board does more than just Boost infrastructure stuff, such as organizing the C++Now conference, and more recently, paying the hosting fees for the Beman Discourse server. Sorry this is so long. :) I may have some of these facts slightly wrong. Like, did BoostCon actually start in 2006? I couldn't figure out definitively which year it was, even though I was there. But I'm much more certain about the major events, and the reasons for things. I also left out most of the non-asset-stewardship aspects of the Steering Committee/Foundation, since they are mostly not germane to the current review. I nevertheless refer to one such aspect below. In light of the history above, here are some points I'd like to make regarding things I've seen said on this list about the Foundation: 1) The Board does not impose its will on the developers on this list. It does sometimes make recommendations or official "calls" of some kind, like saying we should use CMake. It doesn't actually have the ability, as the Boost Foundation Board, to enact such changes. This is not a matter of restraint. It simply can't make concrete changes; only the Boost developers can. Also, there never has been, and doesn't appear to me that there ever will be, any appetite for meddling in Boost development, or forcing developers to do things. 2) The Board is self-selected, in the sense that the Board nominates and votes on Board seats. Multiple Boost authors are on the Board: Peter Dimov, Glen Fernades, Jeff Garland, and me. There are others who are only there for the conference business. There are others, who joined more recently, interested only in Beman. 3) I've read on this list about the desire to "get back" to the Boost Steering Committee way of doing things. This does not make sense. There is no difference between the Boost Steering Committee and the Boost Foundation, except for the name. Sure, there is a change in membership over time. That would have happened with or without the name change. Perhaps this is a desire not to have the current Board membership? If so, please get involved. Asking a volunteer project to do things differently, without volunteering to help yourself, doesn't usually work out. Which brings me to: 4) The Board is a volunteer project, like Boost is. As such, people work mostly on what they care about, and don't really do much for things they don't care about. So when I read, "The Board is not communicating enough," I think there are a couple of things to consider. 4a) Do we expect volunteers to do the stuff they want to work on, and then communicate that they did that to someone else that was not working on that same thing? Do we do that with our Boost libraries? I might communicate changes, including bug fixes, in release notes. I do this because it affects others. But if I make a non-functional change, who do I tell, and why? Note that, when there has been a loss of service, someone has mentioned it on the list right away, as far as I know. Do we also want people to mention when the Board took some action that kept a loss of service from happening? Moreover, I'm not sure what transparency is lacking, given that: 4b) The board publishes minutes of every meeting, and you can come to the meetings if you're interested. Except for occasionally needing to handle a sensitive topic that we do not minute due to its sensitivity, these are not closed meetings. For example, our latest Board member was asked to join the Board because he kept showing up to these open meetings out of his own interest, and would take on tasks from time to time. As you all know, this is how pretty much all open source/volunteer projects work. In short, I think if a Boost user wants to know the details of how Boost works, they subscribe to the Boost mailing list. If a Boost developer wants to know the details of how the Boost Foundation works, they read the minutes and/or come to the meetings. Zach

5 6

Re: [boost] A history of the Boost Foundation
by Zach Laine 11 Sep '24

11 Sep '24

On Wed, Sep 11, 2024 at 2:41 PM Vladimir Prus <vladimir.prus(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >> > > 1) The Board does not impose its will on the developers on this list. >> > > It does sometimes make recommendations or official "calls" of some >> > > kind, like saying we should use CMake >> > > >> > >> > So the email about cutting ties with the C++ Alliance, which started all >> > this, was just non-binding minority report? >> >> I don't get it. Isn't this the thing the developers are voting on >> right now? How is the Board imposing a change on the developers? > > > The original email had no proposal of a vote. Nor did it sound like a recommendation. Right. But again, where was the impact on the Boost developers? I, as a Boost developer was not expected to, nor asked to, do anything differently from what I had done before. This vote was all about the Board not wanting to deal with the Alliance. We think that there would be an adverse impact on the Bosot developers, and think, "screw the developers!" If we expected our decision to adversely affect Boost development, we would have made a different one. Zach

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