Hi,
Well, it would be one license that we would have to deal with. I feel BOOST license has been more openly accepted in the corporate world. At my place of work, there is fear of using anything GPL even with the runtime exception. Last but not the least, since BOOST and TBB are heavily template based, having them under the same umbrella might influence common interfaces. Since BOOST has the Threads package, IMHO, TBB might also fit in. I am mainly focusing on the packaging and standardization of interfaces, documentation and availability under one roof.
I think the limited license acceptability in corporate development departments is an important point (I personally don't have such an attitude, but I'm also coping with all that OSS licensing issues for over 12 years now. But I do know that there is some kind of heavy preoccupation against using any project containing the three letters of nastiness somewhere in there license or documentation.). I only don't see how to change this for TBB. Asking all developers (including Intel as the original contributor) for their permission seems somewhat unpromising to me. Regarding the second point, being heavily template-based doesn't sound like a good common denominator for unifying C++ libraries to me. Many modern libraries rely mostly on templates (e.g. Blitz++, VXL, ITK, TBB,...), but most of them differ significantly in architecture and design. The good point is that most Boost libraries and the TBB are similar in design to the standard C++ library, but this alone does not make them inherently compatible and fit in together in a homogeneous way. Plus, changing an well-formed and established API interface like that of the TBB (to something that might be, from my experience with certain boost libraries, a lot more cryptical) sounds like a really bad idea to me. On the other hand, I totally agree with you that it would be nice to have a standartized library format and a central source for all these libraries, most preferably the way Boost provides this nowadays. :) Regards, Hendrik -- Hendrik Belitz, Dipl.-Inform. API-Development ISD Software und Systeme GmbH Hauert 4 D - 44227 Dortmund Germany Fon: +49 (0)231/97 93-0 Fax: +49 (0)231/97 93-101 Mail: hbelitz@isdgroup.de Internet: www.isdgroup.de Geschäftsführung: Günter Flassig (Vors.), Dr. Jörg Ruhwedel Sitz Dortmund, Amtsgericht Dortmund HRB 4601