Hi all, I'm new to this list but have been tracking Boost development for a long time. Never thought I could contribute something new to Boost, but after seeing this year's GSoC Boost proposal, I changed my mind and decided to take a deeper look at the JSON proposal. I've used the Boost.serialization library extensively and always end up needing something more portable than the binary archive and less heavyweight than the XML archive. Also, I spend a lot of time developing with Boost.Python and a format already supported by Python would be great, so seeing there was interest in a JSON archive was the perfect opportunity to join. Anyway, I've some points regarding this project before I apply, don't know if I should send them to Jeff (who suggested the idea) or to Robert (who implemented Boost.serialization). Instead of just bothering them, I'll bother all the subscribers to boost@lists.boost.org :-) - the JSON spec is quite simple, but given that it's a subset of YAML (actually Syck parses JSON as well), should it support it in the future as well? - what about Unicode? I know that Boost.Regex supports Unicode if compiled against ICU and the JSON spec states that everything must be in Unicode (correct me if I'm wrong) - TinyJSON and JSON.Spirit both use a MIT-like license (JSON.Spirit is licensed under CPOL). The Boost license is compatible with them but, could it pose a problem? There's JSONcpp [1] as well, which is public domain. - wading through the Boost mailing list archives, I found a message [2] by Daryle Walker in which he expressed interest in a JSON serializer some while ago (2005), but I think it wasn't discussed any further. Eric Newhuis wrote again about having a JSON archive just a few weeks ago [3] - which platforms must be supported? I can only provide support to GCC under Linux, but I guess it has to support MSVC and some other platforms. Will it have to be available for all the platforms supported by Boost at the end of the summer or is it more of a process? That is, given that one of the purposes of GSoC is to involve more people into free software/open source projects, whoever (I hope it's me :-)) implements the JSON serializer, will become its maintainer too and will take care of all the tasks related to accept patches, track bugs, add support for future/incomplete platforms, etc. - I thought of adding JSON support to Boost.Spirit as well. Currently it has support for printing ASTs in XML (see tree_to_xml). A JSON dumper would be quite useful for manipulating ASTs in a high level language, such as Python through Boost.Python Cheers. 1 - http://jsoncpp.sourceforge.net/ 2 - http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2005/09/94438.php 3 - http://lists.boost.org/boost-users/2008/03/34336.php