On 21/07/2017 16:55, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
Niall Douglas wrote:
Well, that's just ignorant and self serving elitism.
Remarkable how much this ignorant and self-serving elitism could do for the C++ community over the years. Surely by accident or by mistake.
Some would say that what has been achieved so far is a pale shadow of what would have been achieved without the self-serving elitism. If you look at the bits of Boost which got into the C++ standard, they are very obviously the simple bits. There's a lesson in that.
A steering committee of non-Boost-developers stands a far better chance of...
... changing Boost into non-Boost, because everyone feels the need to remake things that are alien to him in his own image.
Boost has been created and has been maintained (not just in a technical sense) by developers, and what it is today reflects it. A steering committee of non-Boost-developers is capable of producing something good, but this good thing will no longer be Boost, except by name.
No, Boost has been created and has been maintained and funded by its three main stakeholders, only one of which is Boost library developers. Boost library developers are a quarter to a third of that stakeholdership - important, sure, but not a majority like they think they are. A big stakeholder is the user base, most of whom are thrilled with this decision, mostly by its symbolic significance rather than any love of cmake. The other big stakeholder is the C++ leadership and WG21, most of whom are also pleased with this decision as it suggests Boost may yet have some relevance as a standards incubator into the future. Now, none of the above will be popular things to say on boost-dev, there is a widespread belief here that Boost can't exist without the library developers and that's all that matters. But equally, Boost can't exist without the C++ ecosystem either, nor can it exist without the people who behind the scenes make the mailing list, website, servers and financial accounts all work. And call me old fashioned, but Boost can't exist without users using it either. Anyone can build a marvelous cathedral. But what's the point if nobody ever marvels at it because nobody ever uses it? I really think that top quality libraries can never be truly top quality unless there is a significant, large, enthusiastic user base for them who finds them amazing. Bigger the better. You need to *know* your cathedral is marvelous through userbase, not just believe it personally. I *definitely* don't think libraries should be standardised without that for sure, and remember Boost was originally set up as an incubator for libraries to be standardised. The end users are in my belief the most important and biggest stakeholder of all. We need to do a lot better by them than we have. Niall -- ned Productions Limited Consulting http://www.nedproductions.biz/ http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/