On 01/08/2024 23:42, Robert Ramey via Boost wrote:
Regardless, I see the purpose and goals of Boost significantly changing or Boost dying. Consider this my modest tribute to a life well lived.
The way I'd look at it Robert is life is change, and something changing significantly means it ain't dead yet. I got some negative comments for saying this last time, but I'll say it again - the proportion of the active users here who personally knew the original set of active users has become a minority. That is a sign of vitality - we are being replaced. I, like you, have had considerable interactions with both sets over the years. Both sets have positives, but both have negatives. Quite a few appear to be yearning for a third option which isn't either of the current two on the menu before us. Unfortunately, politics rarely presents ideal options. You get two options most people don't much like, and the choices are A, or B, or vote for neither. The C++ Alliance choice is very much a put your eggs in one basket in exchange for proactive funding of dev work until the money runs out. The Boost Foundation choice is to continue the benign and sometimes not so benign neglect of dev work and the developers themselves. So long as the source code remains Boost licensed, many will feel it doesn't matter which path is chosen. A fork and a new website could always be done if whomever owns the supporting IP got into trouble. So I suspect most will choose to sit on the fence and see how things play out. The Alliance choice thanks to the direct funding of devs will always have far more energy and bodies to apply to problems. They will choose the problems which match their choice of direction however. There will be an actual direction now for better or for worse. I honestly don't know which is better. One has strength and vitality but it's brittle, the other is continue to meander aimlessly. I suspect the former has less chance of "Boost dying" in the short term, but who knows longer term. I will say this: the future is determined by the young and energetic, and that's ain't us no more. So I guess whatever they think is best. Niall