On 1/15/2015 4:25 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:
On 15 Jan 2015 at 12:42, Edward Diener wrote:
I highly object to the tone of your response. Bringing up a matter on this mailing list related to a Boost library is not a command for anyone to do anything. By responding the way you have done you are discouraging people with issues from using Boost mailing lists to start a discussion about a particular library.
I apologise if I have offended anyone on the list, including you Edward.
However, there is an etiquette when dealing with deficiencies in open source libraries. You first raise the issue with the library's maintainers before going onto public lists - and before I replied to the OP, I checked the github ASIO issue tracker and the Boost issue tracker and found no mention of the deficiencies.
I do not know of anything within Boost which says that library maintainers are supposed to be contacted directly before one posts issues on the mailing lists. In fact I have always assumed that the mailing lists were the correct way to first bring up an issue and only if there was no response from anybody connected with the library in question does one then attempt to go further. Regardless of how this normally occurs please realize that the mailing lists are completely viable ways of alerting library maintainers to issues regarding their library, with the protocol normally being that the OP should have the form of "[library] Some Subject" as the subject of the mailing list post. I hope you also realize that programmers who use Boost, and who are not contributors themselves to Boost libraries, do occasionally send mailing lists messages to the developers mailing list and do not know anything about supposed etiquettes about suggested changes to a library. They are simple bringing up issues and assume the mailing lists are one way to do this, which they in fact are. Of course programmmers can file bug and/or suggestion reports on Boost trac or issue pull requests for changes on Github. But I would actually expect attempting to directly contact a library developer is a thing a programmer would do only as a last resort, if other things met little or no response. Like you I also viewed the OP as a very large request and or suggestion. But a library maintainer has every right to respond as he sees fit, one of those responses being that whatever changes which are being asked for he is unwilling to implement for his own given reasons. But certainly nobody should come down on anyone bringing up an issue regarding a library on this mailing list unless the post is insulting or derogatory to that library for personal reasons. That certainly was not the case in any respect in the OP.