On 24 March 2010 19:37, Edward Diener <eldiener@tropicsoft.com> wrote:
If none of the Boost leaders pay any attention to this situation then the feeling by end-users that a library is not really being supported will continue and people will stop using that library.
Boost leaders?
If Boost had some sort of policy by which authors/maintainers of a library, who are no longer paying any attention to it in response to Boost users, get relieved of the responsibility of supporting the library and someone else is chosen to maintain it instead, it would be good for the end-users and for Boost developers as well.
IMO it'd be better if a group of people took over, for a higher bus factor. I would put the library into maintenance i.e. no major changes. Any new features could be developed separately and then proposed on the list (not necessarily a formal review). I'm not sure if it should be formalised though, circumstances might different for different components.
Of course this would mean that whatever "rights" once a library is submitted to Boost ( I am not a legal expert ) which the author of a Boost library retains can be removed if the author does not support the library any longer, and that this is part of Boost policy.
The boost license is pretty clear. There's no need to remove any rights, ownership isn't as formal as you think. It's mostly based on respect and convention. http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt Daniel