On 08/05/2014 2:32 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:
On 8 May 2014 at 13:59, Sohail Somani wrote:
For sure, Boost has been slowly dying since 2011 now. I'll be talking on that exact subject at C++ Now on Saturday week, which I assume will be as popular as a funeral.
Can you say that? I think that the main Boosters were busy moving to Git. That took a long time and from my perspective, they did a good job given what they were aiming for.
There are also wider trends at work. For example, all open source has seen a drop of about 25% in terms of regular contributors or projects regularly active during this past year 2013-2014. I would assume that is macroeconomic in nature.
It could be that Boost saw a dip 2011-2013 during post-C++11 blues and the git migration, then the normal upturn got slammed by the macroeconomic downturn for all open source. I do, in my talk, explain that I don't know for sure, but I don't think I'm alone in sensing a general feeling of disconnection from purpose here compared to a few years ago. For example, boost-users has a posting rate nearly a third that of before 2011.
My personal feeling is that it is not a general decrease in interest but possibly a decrease in the ability to invest time which could be economic. It's hard for me to say that I wouldn't rather be reviewing Boost libraries and writing cool new code but someone's gotta pay the bills. If this is the case, then the main change I would suggest is that Boost needs to be easier to work with. Currently, the modular thing works kinda OK but it's a giant PITA to fork. I forked it once and I was successful but eventually gave up and just went off the released zip file to make the changes I wanted.
Too bad I won't be there to attend this funeral! Would have liked to hear your points.
Some 40 slides and a 20,000 word position white paper should be published as part of the conference proceedings.
Sounds like fun....