Vinnie Falco wrote:
I want to be clear here, the practice of "we need to accept it into Boost to get users and find out if its any good" to be a harmful idea that carries significant reputational risk. There is no stated policy which describes whether or not this practice is valid for determining acceptance in a review, which is itself a problem (lack of a clear written instructions on how reviewers should evaluate libraries), and the reason that I am having to make these posts.
Boost has never required a library to have users in order to be accepted. If the review process says it's good, it's good. Reviews from users count more than reviews from non-users, of course, but that's the extent of it. As for "reputational risk", the reputation we have has been built while using the above policy. I'm also thinking that we apparently need to have a (written) rule about people questioning the review result without having submitted a review. If you can't be bothered to invest the time to review the library, your opinion on whether it belongs in Boost doesn't count. Or stated differently, the proper and only way to express your opinion on whether the library belongs in Boost or not is by submitting a review.