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