On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 9:54 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

I agree that the current wording cannot go live as an official Boost website.

I think that the current wording was just something copied and pasted in an effort to comply with a legal requirement since the new site collects information as part of the login process where the old site does not. The C++ Alliance has no desire to restrict anyone such as Boost users, library authors, maintainers, or anyone else. We are very happy to receive pull requests with new proposed text, and I would like to keep reminding everyone that the site is going to be a work in progress for years. I am very much a believer in merit and fairness. I do not like taking credit for other people's work and I do not like taking power through bureaucratic or political means. Instead I prefer to get credit for hard work and measurable results. Hopefully it is safe to say that most people know me and my motivations fairly well, judging from the C++ Alliance contributions to Boost, there is no reason to expect that this will change. So if there is a problem with the language of the privacy policy please assume that we are operating in good faith. And again, we're happy to receive pull requests :) I do not think we should wait until the website is "perfect" because that is in truth unlikely to ever happen. What we need to do is publish this site sooner rather than later and let the community pitch in to help us polish it up further. Thanks

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 3:26 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

There are issues that can be fixed post-release and there are issues that should block the release. I think, this one is of the latter kind.

You are of course right, and we will get right on that. I have looked online for a suitable policy that is not loaded to the gills with unintelligible legal jargon. Do you perhaps have a policy we might use, or point us to one that we can copy? Thanks!

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 4:56 PM Louis Tatta wrote:

Privacy Policy: https://app.termly.io/document/privacy-policy/bfe4fb2e-ebf6-4e44-ac76-35ed08... TOS: https://app.termly.io/document/terms-and-conditions/0d83570f-fbbf-4e15-93be-...

It really sucks what governments have done to the Internet that we need these almost completely illegible documents just to publish information legally. Isn't there a much more simple and straightforward policy that we could use? Perhaps the Boost Foundation has something on hand? I would like to see the "Boost Software License of privacy policies" if such a thing exists. Thanks

On 2/14/24 03:55, Louis Tatta via Boost wrote:

Dear Andrey and Phil,

First, thank you so much for taking your time to review the site and report issues on GitHub. There's no rush to get the website going, but issues like the Privacy Policy and TOS are important and can be easily updated. The policy, as you see by the date, is almost a year old. Thanks to you guys, I believe it is now fixed. Here are the links to the updated Privacy Policy and TOS Preview:

Privacy Policy: https://app.termly.io/document/privacy-policy/bfe4fb2e-ebf6-4e44-ac76-35ed08... TOS: https://app.termly.io/document/terms-and-conditions/0d83570f-fbbf-4e15-93be-...

If you could review it again, it would be much appreciated.

I've only taken a brief look at the TOU document, and I'm not seeing what has changed. In particular, I don't see the issues I pointed to in my bug report resolved.

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 8:10 AM Phil Endecott via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

Before worrying about the legal jargon, the important thing is to decide what your privacy policy actually is. The simplest privacy policy is "we don't record any personal information". It's not difficult to translate that from plain English to legal jargon.

The site records whatever you give it, plus what is publicly available. If you enter your name we record that. So I think it is not technically correct to say "we don't record any personal information."

There are a couple of issues that make it a bit more complicated in this case. First, you're embedding YouTube videos on the site. YouTube is undoubtedly doing its best to "monetize" site visitors through those;

hmm...that's a good point. I think we should have an option to disable YouTube embeds. I despise what Big Tech companies have done to our privacy. This new Boost website should try to lead by example, and not force the YouTube embeds along with the tracking it comes with. I have opened a new issue for this that you can participate in here: https://github.com/cppalliance/temp-site/issues/961 The second issue is the login. If I understand correctly, the forum

is not yet active. If that's the case, I suggest that language to address that can be added later. What does the "sign up" form currently do?

When you sign up, an account is created which remembers settings. If you then, for example, submit a News item, then when a moderator approves the posting your screen name will appear along with your avatar as the author of the news item. And when someone clicks the name or avatar they will see your User Profile page. There will eventually be controls to let you decide what appears on that page. Right now I think there's nothing there except the avatar. But there will be things like, whether or not you are an author, how many reviews you've participated in, and so on.

If there is anything else that you are planning to do that involves personal information, please tell us!

Yes well there are a lot of ideas! The over-arching theme is to aggregate all of the publicly available information about you which is relevant to participation in Boost. How many GitHub issues you create, how many commits to boostorg repos do you make, how many reviews do you write or manage, and so on. I have a theory that one of the ways to stimulate participation in Boost is to raise the level of visibility of the contributors that are already here. A lot of what we do is "secret" not by choice but by circumstance. There is precedent here. wg21 was largely unknown until Boost, C++11, and conferences made it visible and then there was a groundswell of participation (too much, in my opinion, but that's another discussion). When the world moved away from mailing lists, Boost was kind of stranded on its own island. This website is the land bridge for connecting the rest of the world back to us, but in a way that preserves the mailing list as the primary means of communication for engineers and users.

No, you really don't need these documents "just to publish information legally". You need these documents if you plan to invade the privacy of site visitors.

I always thought it was stupid how every website has to ask about how many cookies you want, instead of just putting that in the browser as a global setting. A website cannot "invade the privacy of site visitors" without the help of the browser. All a website can do on its own really, without the user's input, is log your visits and whatever information the browser sends. But this conversation is veering into the political so I should shut up now.

There were a couple of questions I asked before which I don't think have been answered yet. Firstly, whose site is it? Does it belong to Boost, or to C++ Alliance? (In legal terms, who is the "data controller"?)

Currently The C++ Alliance owns everything.

If it belongs to Boost, then I think someone representing Boost really needs to sign off these documents.

Who "represents Boost?"

Secondly, why is Google Analytics on the site?

When I ask, I am told that it is needed to generate visitor reports such as which pages are popular, who is coming from where, and so on. I'm not happy at all that one company has a monopoly on this, so I am open to hearing reasonable alternatives. Google Analytics has a very robust set of features for site operators. I wouldn't mind trading some of that for a system that didn't give free data to Google. Thanks

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 10:25 AM Ruben Perez wrote:

If you're using Analytics, you must provide a cookie banner

...

Are you talking about those annoying pop-ups that every website asks now about how many cookies you want? I hate those. I would like to avoid the need for any non-functional cookies. @Sam Thanks

Hey everyone, I've seen a lot of you raising concerns about the privacy policy on the new beta site. Honestly, I didn't expect it to hit a nerve like it did. My bad. When we were setting it up, I figured we'd just use the kind of standard stuff you see everywhere else, like on Twitter or Facebook, especially since we're now letting folks log in and share their own stuff. But I get it. Moving from a simple site to something more interactive meant we had to change the privacy terms to keep up with laws from all over the place. I really value the input you've all given. It's clear I've got some homework to do on this. On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 2:32 PM Ruben Perez via Boost wrote:

...

Are you talking about those annoying pop-ups that every website asks now about how many cookies you want? I hate those. I would like to avoid the need for any non-functional cookies. @Sam

Thanks

Yes. The only way to only have functional cookies is not having any analytics tool at all. This includes Google Analytics, Amplitude, Sentry and similar tooling. Otherwise, you need the cookie banner to stay legal.

Regards, Ruben.

_______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost

Le mercredi 14 février 2024 à 11:46 -0800, Vinnie Falco via Boost a écrit :

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 11:32 AM Ruben Perez wrote:

...

Yes. The only way to only have functional cookies is not having any analytics tool at all. This includes Google Analytics, Amplitude, Sentry and similar tooling. Otherwise, you need the cookie banner to stay legal.

Then we are going to dump analytics. We can just use that ancient web logging tool whatever it's called, I think it is set up on the old website.

For GDPR compliant analytics, there's also matomo ( https://matomo.org ) which has been approved by the CNIL, the data protection authority in France, and is used by several EU organizations. It can be configured so that you don't need a cookie banner, at least for France (see https://matomo.org/faq/how-to/how-do-i-configure-matomo-without-tracking-con... ). Regards, Julien

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 11:54 AM Sam Darwin via Boost wrote:

Plausible Analytics offers an "easy to use and privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative. Plausible is intuitive, lightweight and open source web analytics. No cookies and fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU, powered by European-owned cloud infrastructure."

Oh yes I like the sound of that! What does the rest of the list think? Thanks

Plausible Analytics offers an "easy to use and privacy-friendly Google Analytics alternative. Plausible is intuitive, lightweight and open source web analytics. No cookies and fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. Made and hosted in the EU, powered by European-owned cloud infrastructure."

No cookies. IP addresses are anonymized with a hash function and rotating salt value.

Sounds pretty good.

On 2/14/24 21:29, Andrey Semashev wrote:

On 2/14/24 19:29, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

...

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 8:10 AM Phil Endecott via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

...

If it belongs to Boost, then I think someone representing Boost really needs to sign off these documents.

Who "represents Boost?"

There is Boost Steering Committee (or was it renamed to Boost Foundation?) Does it no longer exist? I think, Marshall Clow and Glen Fernandes were members.

There's a discussion group here:

https://groups.google.com/g/boost-steering

BTW, the Steering Committee should be able to hire a lawyer to help with legal matters, such as composing the TOU and Privacy Policy, if needed.

Also BTW, I think, Boost website should be owned by Boost Foundation rather than a side commercial company, however related that company is to Boost.

On 2/14/24 22:12, Glen Fernandes wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 1:29 PM Andrey Semashev wrote:

...

On 2/14/24 19:29, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

...

Who "represents Boost?"

There is Boost Steering Committee (or was it renamed to Boost Foundation?) Does it no longer exist? I think, Marshall Clow and Glen Fernandes were members.

What was the Steering Committee (and is now the Boost Foundation) only serves the needs of the Boost developer community. i.e. We don't govern Boost development, but provide support and resources. - For example, paying for the domain and hosting.

(Taking off the Boost Foundation hat and putting on the Boost author hat): As Boost developers (library authors, contributors) we get to decide on the direction of our libraries, as well as the content of the Boost website.

This venue (the mailing list) is where you can decide what should be on our website. Or voice concerns about what currently is and instead shouldn't be on our website.

I fully agree that the community should decide what will be on the website, content-wise. But given that the website is an important element of the Boost project infrastructure, I would expect Boost Foundation to own and manage it. This will affect what is written in the legal documents such as Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

On 2/15/24 01:46, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 3:27 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

...

I fully agree that the community should decide what will be on the website, content-wise. But given that the website is an important element of the Boost project infrastructure, I would expect Boost Foundation to own and manage it. This will affect what is written in the legal documents such as Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Can you be specific as to your meaning of "own" and "manage" in that? What specifically is owned? What specifically is managed? Is it intellectual ownership? Is it physical ownership?

Items that could possibly be owned: * The source code for the web site. * The content for the web site. * The user contributed content on the web site. * The machines running the web site. etc

Items that could possibly be managed: * The repository for the source code. * The database for the content. * The machines, and controlling accounts, for everything. etc

By owning I mean that Boost Foundation should have all rights over the website implementation. This includes the rights to run, modify and distribute the code and media content (text, styling, images, video, audio, etc.) that constitutes the website implementation. This includes full access to GitHub repositories and other online services that are used to develop, build and deploy these materials. Boost Foundation must have full access to the machines and online accounts that are used for running the website, and preferably own them. For user-generated content, such as forum and blog posts, videos, comments, issues on the trackers, discussions, etc., as well as personal information provided through account registration, that content belongs to its authors, but Boost Foundation may reserve some rights, such as to be able to moderate and publish it. But, of course, we first have to decide what kind of content that will be and how we want to use it. Then there is the part where a lawyer would help to compose the legal agreement between Boost Foundation and users. For library content, such as library code, documentation, library logos, release notes, library list and so on, that content belongs to the library authors and maintainers and is licensed to Boost Foundation under the library license terms (which is usually the Boost Software License) to allow reproduction and distribution. This type of content should be explicitly distinct from the user-generated content, as it is not covered by the users' terms of use agreement. By managing I mean managing all the above assets and content. For example, Boost Foundation should be able to expand or reduce the amount of resources used for running the website (e.g. to accommodate for the changing load). Boost Foundation should be able to moderate user-generated content and update the website content, e.g. on Boost releases or new library additions. Boost Foundation should be able to perform backups of the website, including user-generated content. This doesn't necessarily mean that Boost Foundation members will be doing all of this by themselves. Some things can be automated, other things can be done by trusted volunteers from the community or hired staff, if needed. I believe, this is pretty much how it happens today. But the important part is that the full control over the website should be in the Boost Foundation hands, not someone else's. I would like to stress that I'm suggesting this not because I have reasons to distrust Vinnie or The C++ Alliance. I surely do not intend to offend anyone. Although I have my complaints, I think they can be only commended for all the work they are doing on the website. However, The C++ Alliance is a commercial organization that is distinct from the Boost project, which is (at least, legally) represented by Boost Foundation. The website is supposed to be the face of the Boost project, and an important part of its functioning. I think, the Boost project should be more self-sufficient and protected against disasters, mishaps and misbehavior of external parties.

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 7:56 PM Glen Fernandes via Boost wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 Andrey Semashev wrote:

...

I fully agree that the community should decide what will be on the website, content-wise. But given that the website is an important element of the Boost project infrastructure, I would expect Boost Foundation to own and manage it.

Yes, we (Foundation) own and manage the following things: - The boost.org domain

Indeed.

- The web servers hosting the Boost website - The servers hosting the Boost mailing lists

Do they? I thought they were leased / rented cloud VMs. -- -- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell -- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supone Nada -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 5:14 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

...the Boost project, which is (at least, legally) represented by Boost Foundation

What does it mean that "the Boost project is legally represented by Boost Foundation?" Can you give historical examples of this representation? Or future scenarios? Thanks

Warning, I could be wrong in anything below as I have faulty memory. :-) On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 7:14 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

On 2/15/24 01:46, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell wrote:

...

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 3:27 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

...

I fully agree that the community should decide what will be on the website, content-wise. But given that the website is an important element of the Boost project infrastructure, I would expect Boost Foundation to own and manage it. This will affect what is written in the legal documents such as Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Can you be specific as to your meaning of "own" and "manage" in that? What specifically is owned? What specifically is managed? Is it intellectual ownership? Is it physical ownership?

Items that could possibly be owned: * The source code for the web site. * The content for the web site. * The user contributed content on the web site. * The machines running the web site. etc

Items that could possibly be managed: * The repository for the source code. * The database for the content. * The machines, and controlling accounts, for everything. etc

By owning I mean that Boost Foundation should have all rights over the website implementation.

"All rights" has a specific legal meaning. And applying it would rob the developers of the product of their rights. Assuming they want to, for example, keep the copyright on the source code. A few things to upfront about.. * The Boost Foundation has historically owned almost nothing. * When it was the Boost Steering Committee it owned nothing at all. * Traditionally the Foundation subsidises and facilitates the work and resources of others. * Specifically the Foundation does not own the Boost Libraries or the current website implementation. * I, personally, own much of the current website implementation as I initially wrote it. Although it evolved into shared ownership thanks to contributions from others, like the incredible work of Daniel James. All made possible by the use of BSL and individual donations of server resources.

This includes the rights to run, modify and distribute the code and media content (text, styling, images, video, audio, etc.) that constitutes the website implementation. This includes full access to GitHub repositories and other online services that are used to develop, build and deploy these materials.

Do you mean that the authors of the new website implementation need to grant someone(s) sufficient rights? If so, then what we are talking about is choosing an appropriate license and distribution mechanism. If you are instead talking about transfering the copyright to the Boost Foundation, then I would strongly oppose it.

Boost Foundation must have full access to the machines and online accounts that are used for running the website, and preferably own them.

It is my understanding that it would be impossible for the Foundation to own the various Azure VMs and caching proxies involved in running the new website. Unless the Foundation is willing to employ a full DevOps team with enough funding to procure hardware and bandwidth indefinitely (think $1M/year range).

For user-generated content, such as forum and blog posts, videos, comments, issues on the trackers, discussions, etc., as well as personal information provided through account registration, that content belongs to its authors, but Boost Foundation may reserve some rights, such as to be able to moderate and publish it. But, of course, we first have to decide what kind of content that will be and how we want to use it. Then there is the part where a lawyer would help to compose the legal agreement between Boost Foundation and users.

There's a common licensing arrangement for that. So, yes. But there are variations that would need to get decided on. Like if it would be needed to allow for full removal, on request, by the user to comply with particular jurisdictions.

For library content, such as library code, documentation, library logos, release notes, library list and so on, that content belongs to the library authors and maintainers and is licensed to Boost Foundation under the library license terms (which is usually the Boost Software License) to allow reproduction and distribution. This type of content should be explicitly distinct from the user-generated content, as it is not covered by the users' terms of use agreement.

Yes.

By managing I mean managing all the above assets and content. For example, Boost Foundation should be able to expand or reduce the amount of resources used for running the website (e.g. to accommodate for the changing load). Boost Foundation should be able to perform backups of the website, including user-generated content.

This is more commonly handled by designating someone (usually one or more individuals or organizations) to deal with all such details.

Boost Foundation should be able to moderate user-generated content and update the website content, e.g. on Boost releases or new library additions.

Traditionally that has never been done by the Foundation. And would be a significant change of the duties and rights of the Foundation. Currently, and previously, those duties fall on designated individuals. Those individuals were picked nominally by consensus of the community.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Boost Foundation members will be doing all of this by themselves. Some things can be automated, other things can be done by trusted volunteers from the community or hired staff, if needed. I believe this is pretty much how it happens today.

No, yes, but mostly no. The Foundation has close to zero involvement in the "development, publication, and management of the Boost C++ Libraries product".

But the important part is that the full control over the website should be in the Boost Foundation hands, not someone else's.

I agree that control of the web site should not be bound to any one organization. And hence I agree that the Boost Foundation should not own the web site.

I would like to stress that I'm suggesting this not because I have reasons to distrust Vinnie or The C++ Alliance. I surely do not intend to offend anyone. Although I have my complaints, I think they can be only commended for all the work they are doing on the website.

As a C++ Alliance board member, thank you for the sentiment.

However, The C++ Alliance is a commercial organization that is distinct from the Boost project, which is (at least, legally) represented by Boost Foundation.

The C++ Alliance is on equal footing to the Boost Foundation as it pertains, legally, to the Boost C++ Libraries project. Neither owns the actual product(s). Both support through resources and contributions the development of the product(s). Currently, the Boost Foundation legally owns the boost.org domain name (although I'm not actually sure of this as the whois record is shielding the registered owner). Also currently, the C++ Alliance owns the proposed website implementation, as it was predominantly a work for hire.

The website is supposed to be the face of the Boost project, and an important part of its functioning.

Indeed! And which the C++ Alliance is trying to improve upon.

I think, the Boost project should be more self-sufficient and protected against disasters, mishaps and misbehavior of external parties.

I think having the C++ Alliance manage the resources and ongoing development of the new website in an appropriately open manner is an improvement in those respects from the current situation. -- -- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell -- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supone Nada -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 8:01 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

On 2/15/24 07:33, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell wrote:

...

Warning, I could be wrong in anything below as I have faulty memory. :-)

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 7:14 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

...

On 2/15/24 01:46, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell wrote:

...

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 3:27 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

...

I fully agree that the community should decide what will be on the website, content-wise. But given that the website is an important element of the Boost project infrastructure, I would expect Boost Foundation to own and manage it. This will affect what is written in the legal documents such as Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Can you be specific as to your meaning of "own" and "manage" in that? What specifically is owned? What specifically is managed? Is it intellectual ownership? Is it physical ownership?

Items that could possibly be owned: * The source code for the web site. * The content for the web site. * The user contributed content on the web site. * The machines running the web site. etc

Items that could possibly be managed: * The repository for the source code. * The database for the content. * The machines, and controlling accounts, for everything. etc

By owning I mean that Boost Foundation should have all rights over the website implementation.

"All rights" has a specific legal meaning. And applying it would rob the developers of the product of their rights. Assuming they want to, for example, keep the copyright on the source code.

I'm not talking about copyright notices in the source code, attribution or authorship. In some jurisdictions, authorship is not even transferable.

I'm talking about all the rights to use, modify, distribute, publish, <insert those legal terms here> the website. I'm not sure what is the correct term to name those rights collectively, is it property rights?

Yes, the term is property rights. And the mechanism used to convey such rights is a license (the "L" in BSL).

...

A few things to upfront about..

* The Boost Foundation has historically owned almost nothing. * When it was the Boost Steering Committee it owned nothing at all. * Traditionally the Foundation subsidises and facilitates the work and resources of others. * Specifically the Foundation does not own the Boost Libraries or the current website implementation. * I, personally, own much of the current website implementation as I initially wrote it. Although it evolved into shared ownership thanks to contributions from others, like the incredible work of Daniel James. All made possible by the use of BSL and individual donations of server resources.

Ok, but BSL allows Boost Foundation "to use, reproduce, display, distribute, execute, and transmit" the current website, "and to prepare derivative works" of it, free of charge and transitively. Is the new website also licensed under BSL? If not, what is the license?

I'm asking because the only document of this kind I've found on the website is the Terms of Use, which is very different from BSL.

Right. This is why I was asking what you meant. My conclusion is that the C++ Alliance needs to clarify the licensing of the website implementation.

...

...

Boost Foundation must have full access to the machines and online accounts that are used for running the website, and preferably own them.

It is my understanding that it would be impossible for the Foundation to own the various Azure VMs and caching proxies involved in running the new website. Unless the Foundation is willing to employ a full DevOps team with enough funding to procure hardware and bandwidth indefinitely (think $1M/year range).

If the website is running on a cloud VM, the Foundation should be the one who rents that VM from the cloud provider. If the website runs on private physical hardware then that hardware should be owned by the Foundation. I don't think the latter scenario is impossible, as this is how it is currently.

I don't remember a time when Boost owned any hardware for the web server. Even the original ran on rented, free of charge, hardware and bandwidth. And, from reading Foundation minutes, it currently runs, or will shortly run, on a cloud VM on the DigitalOcean provider. I am failing to understand why the Foundation needs to directly operate or rent the VM though.

...

...

For user-generated content, such as forum and blog posts, videos, comments, issues on the trackers, discussions, etc., as well as personal information provided through account registration, that content belongs to its authors, but Boost Foundation may reserve some rights, such as to be able to moderate and publish it. But, of course, we first have to decide what kind of content that will be and how we want to use it. Then there is the part where a lawyer would help to compose the legal agreement between Boost Foundation and users.

There's a common licensing arrangement for that. So, yes. But there are variations that would need to get decided on. Like if it would be needed to allow for full removal, on request, by the user to comply with particular jurisdictions.

I think it goes without saying that users should be allowed to delete their content. Including their personal information.

Both the Foundation and C++ Alliance are US incorporated. So, it needs to be said. :-)

...

...

By managing I mean managing all the above assets and content. For example, Boost Foundation should be able to expand or reduce the amount of resources used for running the website (e.g. to accommodate for the changing load). Boost Foundation should be able to perform backups of the website, including user-generated content.

This is more commonly handled by designating someone (usually one or more individuals or organizations) to deal with all such details.

...

Boost Foundation should be able to moderate user-generated content and update the website content, e.g. on Boost releases or new library additions.

Traditionally that has never been done by the Foundation. And would be a significant change of the duties and rights of the Foundation. Currently, and previously, those duties fall on designated individuals.

Regarding "designated individuals", that's what I was saying by "trusted volunteers" below.

Regarding whether that would be a significant change, yes and no. We do have a mailing list moderator (Marshall Clow, if I'm not mistaken), for example, even if this role requires little or no intervention. But my understanding is that the new website will offer new ways of communication and posting user-generated content. It follows that there should be someone who will moderate that new content.

Each of the 19 Boost lists has a different administrator. Not sure if moderation is the right term. As all they do is backup SPAM management. There's currently a mechanism for moderation on the new website. Although it has some kinks to work out with it and will need adjustments in the future.

...

Those individuals were picked nominally by consensus of the community.

I don't think we ever elected a mailing list moderator,

I guess I should clarify.. We did it long ago by some people volunteering and no one objecting. For example I used to be the admin/moderator of 2 of the mail lists. I don't know who receives the list admin emails currently though. As they are obscured behind alias emails. And the rearrangement of those from individuals to the aliases happened in the dark.

or who runs the website,

Same deal. People volunteered and no one objected. Again, for example, I did much of the website management for a decade or so.

or who owns boostorg on GitHub, or manages the git superproject. Even if we did, there must be someone who will grant the elected person with the necessary permissions and resources to fulfill his new role. I believe, that "someone" is the Foundation, or rather, its members.

I'm not sure it matters who does the granting. Just that it happens. Although it does matter who is legally responsible for the content.

...

...

This doesn't necessarily mean that Boost Foundation members will be doing all of this by themselves. Some things can be automated, other things can be done by trusted volunteers from the community or hired staff, if needed. I believe this is pretty much how it happens today.

No, yes, but mostly no. The Foundation has close to zero involvement in the "development, publication, and management of the Boost C++ Libraries product".

...

But the important part is that the full control over the website should be in the Boost Foundation hands, not someone else's.

I agree that control of the web site should not be bound to any one organization. And hence I agree that the Boost Foundation should not own the web site.

I can agree to this, if Boost Foundation has an open enough license for the website implementation, such as BSL,

I think you meant C++ Alliance in that. As that's who owns the new implementation.

and the website runs on VMs and/or hardware that is rented/owned by Boost Foundation.

Sure. As long as the people who get hired by the C++ Alliance to maintain the website are not hindered in their job. Side note.. For many years I've had the desire of having a different, new, organization that is solely responsible for the Boost C++ Libraries. Neither of which the Boost Foundation or C++ Alliance are as they have larger / different mandates. Such an org would be the ideal responsible party in this situation. But, yeah, unlikely to happen. :-) -- -- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell -- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supone Nada -- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

On 2/15/24 18:03, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell wrote:

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 8:01 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

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On 2/15/24 07:33, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell wrote:

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Warning, I could be wrong in anything below as I have faulty memory. :-)

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 7:14 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost wrote:

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But the important part is that the full control over the website should be in the Boost Foundation hands, not someone else's.

I agree that control of the web site should not be bound to any one organization. And hence I agree that the Boost Foundation should not own the web site.

I can agree to this, if Boost Foundation has an open enough license for the website implementation, such as BSL,

I think you meant C++ Alliance in that. As that's who owns the new implementation.

I meant Boost Foundation, the entity that receives the license on the website implementation from The C++ Alliance. But yeah, you could say that The C++ Alliance needs to offer an open enough license.

Andrey Semashev wrote:

For user-generated content, such as forum and blog posts, videos, comments, issues on the trackers, discussions, etc., as well as personal information provided through account registration, that content belongs to its authors, but Boost Foundation may reserve some rights, such as to be able to moderate and publish it.

I'm not sure we want that. It's been my impression that the current leadership of the Boost Foundation would like to foster a more inclusive environment for discussions, by way of having an appropriate code of conduct and its corresponding enforcement. This, while commendable, is at odds with our traditional culture of frank and merciless technical discussion. So I'm not sure I'd like the new BF moderated forum you seem to propose.

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 9:06 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

I think, part of why this discussion culture have succeeded in Boost is the mailing lists, which required registration and pre-moderation of the first post. Most of the time, this was enough of a barrier against spammers and trolls.

I agree. It is The C++ Alliance position that the Boost developer's mailing list is the ideal format for high quality technical discussion. There has been quite a lot of discussion about this last year with talk of moving to a forum. We are against getting rid of the mailing list and replacing it with a forum. In fact we are working on upgrading the mailing list to use Mailman 3 which offers a number of improvements on the back-end (nothing changes with respect to the user experience). In particular I am not very enthusiastic about Discourse, despite it being free. The authors' philosophical stance against recursive threaded discussions is at odds with my positive experiences on the mailing list. You can read the Discourse author's views on that here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/discussions-flat-or-threaded/ and https://blog.codinghorror.com/web-discussions-flat-by-design/ The C++ Alliance honors and respects the Boost traditions of the mailing list. The website we developed does not offer a separate forum nor do we plan on building one or using a third party solution. Based on feedback from last year we have fully embraced the mailing list. Marshall Clow in particular was quite persuasive when he explained his workflow to me (which is optimized for maintaining multiple projects across many separate mailing lists). Thanks

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 9:48 AM Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:

Some moderation will certainly be necessary. The question is who will be doing the moderating.

Thank you, Peter. I did anticipate this when we were developing the specifications for the site, so there are some moderation tools. Anyone can submit News items, and there is a built-in moderation queue. This is to prevent people from making new accounts and spamming. We are happy for volunteers to provide moderation services. There is also an administrative control to disable a user's avatar. This is to prevent defacement or profane imagery. Thanks

On 15/02/2024 18:48, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:

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It's been my impression that the current leadership of the Boost Foundation would like to foster a more inclusive environment for discussions, by way of having an appropriate code of conduct and its

corresponding enforcement.

...

This, while commendable, is at odds with our traditional culture of frank and merciless technical discussion. So I'm not sure I'd like the new BF moderated forum you seem to propose.

I think, part of why this discussion culture have succeeded in Boost is the mailing lists, which required registration and pre-moderation of the first post. Most of the time, this was enough of a barrier against spammers and trolls. I'm afraid, a more open platform for user communication will remove that barrier and reduce the discussion quality. I think, some moderation will be inevitable, if we want our discussions to be more productive than e.g. Reddit. But I'm happy to be wrong on this.

Some moderation will certainly be necessary. The question is who will be doing the moderating.

I think this is an important discussion, thanks for bringing it. My impression is that many times CoC + enforcement processes don't improve the status quo nor make the community more inclusive (and each one of us usually has a different definition for that word, I'm afraid). I don't think the inclusion level is Boost health's weak point, many people from different parts of the world contribute to this "(con)federated" project, and are motivated by technical excellence opportunities (collaborating, discussing, learning with top C++ experts). Like any other open source project, especially for those not heavily funded, it's hard to maintain, but it's, at least in my case, about the passion of building something useful and keeping it, if not relevant, at least useful. A project that lasts 20+ years is something to be proud of. Boost is also special in its architecture where each library author has a lot freedom, which IMHO is a strong point to achieve long running maintainers. In some sense, it's a distributed effort, with all the advantages and disadvantages of that model.

Just because the Boost Foundation has the magic word Boost in its name doesn't mean we necessarily want to give it any power over the day to day operations of the Boost project. Traditionally, the steering committee had none, and didn't even own anything (because it wasn't a legal entity.)

Hardware and services were provided by people and companies willing to help Boost, for free (e.g. Michael Caisse and Ciere Consulting, but there are many others.)

(We're all familiar with what happened the last time the steering committee tried to interfere by announcing that Boost will be switching to CMake - Rene ragequit and nobody switched to CMake.)

The primary activity of the Boost Foundation is to organize and run C++Now, and running a conference in 2024 does require codes of conduct, banning people deemed to make others feel unsafe, and other similar things. But we the project have never had to conform to these rules.

First of all, I'm really grateful to all that have participated in the Boost Steering Committee and the Boost Foundation for their invaluable effort. I'm grateful to all C++ Alliance members for the same reasons. I am sure that all of them have contributed with their best intention, sacrificing time and money for a good goal, their views don't need to be aligned with my views at all to recognize their merit and effort. Tensions and discussions are part of a vivid and healthy environment. Sometimes having success means that an organizations should evolve, and my view is that organizing and running C++Now, which is a very successful and important C++ conference should not longer be an activity that the entity (legal or not) that wants to steer/advice/improve/push Boost libraries should manage. C++Now is great conference, it should have its own life and management. C++Now currently has little Boost-focused content (I think in 2023 a Boost.MP11 talk was in the schedule, but I don't think there was more Boost content, feel free to correct me). In my humble opinion, Boost libraries need a more focused, less general, technically centered coordination/collaboration entity. I envision more engagement could arise from actual maintainers in the entity, those who write the code and commit the bug fixes, if the mission is nearer Boost libraries' technical aspects and not in procedure and/or conference challenges. That does not mean C++Now and Boost libraries can't cooperate effectively, e.g. having a Boost track in the conference, or having selected talks about Boost libraries... Just like in Boost "We emphasize libraries that work well with the C++ Standard Library", the Boost steering entity should work well with C++ conference sterring entities. But focus is a key aspect for a small community like Boost to take advantage of every ounce of enthusiasm from contributors. Technical aspects are what unite us in this project. I seriously think Boost should part ways with C++Now for the benefit of both. Programmers can contribute to multiple projectsif they want, just like they can be in Boost and the Standard C++ Foundation, Cpp Alliance, CppNow, Meeting C++, Qt Foundation, FSF...

In the old days, the SC would probably just say "thank you Vinnie, very nice, do run the site for us and let the community appoint the moderators, we're very thankful for your eating the substantial costs", but this may not be possible today.

I think your quote from the old days is the Boost way of going forward, let facilitate confidence in those that do the work. Tools for library documentation, the website, the old trac, the regression testing framework and matrix, the incubator, migration to github, etc. happened because we have contributors that are willing to do the work. The community just blessed their effort with confidence and until now, results have been positive. Current website is certainly from another era, many contents are outdated, and... I can live with it. However, the new proposed website is quite ready, it looks good, so let's discuss it to iron those final steps (log in, data collection, whatever) and let's put it in production to improve it. IMHO that's the Boost way. My (long) two cents, Ion

On 2/16/24 01:16, David Sankel wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 5:14 PM Andrey Semashev via Boost mailto:boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

 However, The C++ Alliance is a commercial organization that is distinct from the Boost project, which is (at least, legally) represented by Boost Foundation. The website is supposed to be the face of the Boost project, and an important part of its functioning. I think, the Boost project should be more self-sufficient and protected against disasters, mishaps and misbehavior of external parties.

The Boost Foundation is chartered, in part, with management of financial and legal responsibility for Boost. It is 100% volunteer led and most of those on the board personally contribute financially to it. Membership is determined by the existing board and it has been that way since the inception of the Boost Steering Committee (what it was previously called). While Boost is free, servers, legal work, and other expenses are not. You can find out more about the foundation on the website https://sites.google.com/boost.org/boost-foundation/home, where you can additionally find our meeting minutes, membership, etc.

The C++ Alliance has been in contact with the board and has agreed to assign copyright of the new website to the foundation. This is important, especially for IP like the Boost logo if ever there is need to enforce licensing or usage misaligned with the Boost mission.

Additionally, the website and mailing list will be under the dominion of the Boost Foundation. The C++ Alliance has offered to donate funds to keep the server up and running for a couple years, but we're ensuring that the website is not dependent on any single individual's donations and is affordable with Boost Foundation's current income sources.

I hope this helps clear things up. We're doing our best to move forward in a way that is in the Boost community's best interests.

Thank you David for this announcement, it does clear things up. And thank you to The C++ Alliance for assigning the copyright and funding the server maintenance. This truly is a generous donation.

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 5:25 PM Vinnie Falco wrote:

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 2:17 PM David Sankel via Boost wrote:

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The C++ Alliance has been in contact with the board and has agreed to assign copyright of the new website to the foundation.

This is false. The new Boost website we developed is a complex web application similar to a Boost C++ library except it is written in Python. We did not assign the copyright for our code to anyone, and a transfer of copyright is unprecedented in the history of Boost. Our code would be licensed under the Boost Software License if anything, but the copyright is ours as is customary.

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The C++ Alliance has offered to donate funds to keep the server up and running for a couple years

This is also false. We offered to host the website and administer it, as we are already currently doing. The Boost Foundation has the option, but not the requirement, to adjust the DNS records for https://boost.org (which it controls) to point to our servers. At any time they can change this and point back to their existing web server (called “wowbagger”) which they also own and operate. If they don’t like our changes, they can point the domain away from our server. If they want us to do controversial things, we can refuse. This is only fair. Giving the Boost Foundation complete ongoing control of our work is not acceptable.

I am dismayed. If these things are false then we are not on the same page and I'm baffled at the written communication from your people that indicate otherwise. Either there is some serious miscommunication or we were led on. At this point, I don't see how I could support the C++ Alliance website becoming boost.org. We can come up with other ways to do a website refresh. -- David

David, I’ve reviewed the email communication in question and it looks like we were on different pages. I’m not a C++ engineer nor do I have the technical understanding of things like cloud architectures so I will concede that what I wrote might not have aligned with what I had in mind. Instead of pointing fingers or assuming bad faith, let’s clear up any misunderstandings. This is our position: * The C++ Alliance grants the right to reproduce the artwork we have developed for the purpose of publishing the new website and related library assets. In other words, we aren’t setting a legal trap. * The C++ Alliance does not transfer copyright on any source code or artwork, for the reasons Vinnie explained. This is not the Boost tradition. We will, however, make our work open source via the Boost Software License. * The C++ Alliance commits to taking care of the hosting and maintenance of the new website, by paying for services directly. Not by making donations to the Boost Foundation. We hope this clarifies things and will bring us closer to a mutually beneficial solution that will not result in discarding two years of work. On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 2:31 AM David Sankel via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 5:25 PM Vinnie Falco wrote:

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On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 2:17 PM David Sankel via Boost wrote:

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The C++ Alliance has been in contact with the board and has agreed to assign copyright of the new website to the foundation.

This is false. The new Boost website we developed is a complex web application similar to a Boost C++ library except it is written in Python. We did not assign the copyright for our code to anyone, and a transfer of copyright is unprecedented in the history of Boost. Our code would be licensed under the Boost Software License if anything, but the copyright is ours as is customary.

...

The C++ Alliance has offered to donate funds to keep the server up and running for a couple years

This is also false. We offered to host the website and administer it, as we are already currently doing. The Boost Foundation has the option, but not the requirement, to adjust the DNS records for https://boost.org (which it controls) to point to our servers. At any time they can change this and point back to their existing web server (called “wowbagger”) which they also own and operate. If they don’t like our changes, they can point the domain away from our server. If they want us to do controversial things, we can refuse. This is only fair. Giving the Boost Foundation complete ongoing control of our work is not acceptable.

I am dismayed. If these things are false then we are not on the same page and I'm baffled at the written communication from your people that indicate otherwise. Either there is some serious miscommunication or we were led on.

At this point, I don't see how I could support the C++ Alliance website becoming boost.org. We can come up with other ways to do a website refresh.

-- David

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On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 9:34 AM John Maddock via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

I'm not affiliated to either organization, and I need to apologize for not yet having found the time to test drive the proposed new website, but if everything is under the BSL then strictly IMO it is no different to any other contribution to Boost. Indeed, I would actually *expect* any new website code to be BSL licensed?

Of course the licensing of the website should be BSL licensed. This is referring to the new boost logo/artwork copyright. The Boost foundation needs an assignment to enforce its licensing. My big concern at this point is regarding trust. Do we want to hand over control of the Boost mailing lists and website to Vinnie? Prior to these new revelations from the C++ Alliance, this wasn't a question as we were deciding only on accepting his contributions. As I'm putting together a timeline of related events and discussions I have serious reservations. And, just to be clear, my opinions are my own. I'm not speaking for the Boost Foundation here.

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:55 AM René Ferdinand Rivera Morell < grafikrobot@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 12:33 PM David Sankel via Boost wrote:

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On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 9:34 AM John Maddock via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

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I'm not affiliated to either organization, and I need to apologize for not yet having found the time to test drive the proposed new website, but if everything is under the BSL then strictly IMO it is no different to any other contribution to Boost. Indeed, I would actually *expect* any new website code to be BSL licensed?

Of course the licensing of the website should be BSL licensed. This is referring to the new boost logo/artwork copyright. The Boost foundation needs an assignment to enforce its licensing.

Has the Boost Foundation enforced licensing of the current logo? If so, can you give an example of what that was?

Fortunately, at least in my time on the board, it hasn't been an issue. You never need these things up until the moment you do.

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 11:05 AM René Ferdinand Rivera Morell < grafikrobot@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 1:01 PM David Sankel wrote:

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On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:55 AM René Ferdinand Rivera Morell < grafikrobot@gmail.com> wrote:

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Has the Boost Foundation enforced licensing of the current logo? If so, can you give an example of what that was?

Fortunately, at least in my time on the board, it hasn't been an issue. You never need these things up until the moment you do.

So.. The reason I asked is because, AFAIK, it would not be possible for the Boost Foundation to do such enforcement. As the rights for the logo are still with the original author. Hence I'm a bit confused why the change is a requirement now.

I don't know the history of the current logo or if the copyright was assigned to the Software Freedom Conservancy at the time. The Software Freedom Conservancy assigned all Boost-related IP to the Boost Foundation when the latter was formed. This is just a good practice and assignment was always the plan for the new logo at least since May of 2022. Now I'm hearing otherwise.

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 3:55 PM Niall Douglas wrote:

On 16/02/2024 18:55, René Ferdinand Rivera Morell via Boost wrote:

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Has the Boost Foundation enforced licensing of the current logo? If so, can you give an example of what that was?

I remember cease and desist letters being sent to some people many years ago who were sticking Boost branding all over their code and claiming it was a Boost library, when it was not. They promptly removed their claims. This was before the Software Freedom association and long before any Foundations, so very long ago.

Wasn't that through the Boost Consulting (or the later Boostpro Computing) entity? Would not have been through SFC at least. (Nor during the Steering Committee or the Boost Foundation). Glen

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:33 AM David Sankel via Boost wrote:

As I'm putting together a timeline of related events and discussions I have serious reservations.

It isn't obvious how that will be helpful other than finger-pointing and blame-laying, which in my opinion is counterproductive. Louis already conveyed that his communications might not have been clear, so we are willing to concede this point to you. That said, our position is explained now and the website is almost ready to be published so for the third time we are asking, how can we make the best of the work that we have done and figure out a mutually agreeable solution?

Do we want to hand over control of the Boost mailing lists and website to Vinnie? ...I have serious reservations.

"hand over control" sounds exaggerated. The counter-proposal, described in a previous message and repeated here is that The Boost Foundation retains control of the boost.org domain and points the DNS record to our servers running the new website. If at any time you don't like it, then simply point it back to the old server containing the old site, which you control. It is a reasonable system. The people who did the work and paid the costs will execute on their vision explained here: https://cppalliance.org/boost/2023/05/09/New-Website.html https://cppalliance.org/boost/2023/05/08/Future-of-Boost.html Meanwhile the Boost Foundation gets a veto through control of the domain. We hope before any veto actions, that the mailing list is consulted first, as we consulted the list repeatedly to better adapt to the needs of the Boost community. A reasonable question to ask would be, what would it be like where The C++ Alliance maintains and administers the website? Can Vinnie be trusted? Well, I had full access to the Boost X (formerly Twitter) account for almost a year, via the now-discontinued TweetDeck service. During that time I was responsible for 80% of all the posts made to the account. Many of them had images commissioned by our artist, which we paid for. We are happy to do it, as tweets with images get triple the engagement. I asked for permission before every post. Now we have 80% less tweets, because losing access to TweetDeck has sent the message that I can't be trusted. This doesn't feel good and since I am not being paid to contribute to Boost (quite the opposite) I am not particularly motivated to keep tweeting. Another reasonable question to ask would be, what is it like to request services and maintenance from The C++ Alliance? We don't need to guess. Samuel Darwin has been helping the release managers by updating and maintaining the release scripts, administering the infrastructure, and generally providing a continuation of the services that were formerly provided by Ciere Consulting. We also added Drone CI pull requests to all repositories, and provided GitHub Actions scripting support. Sam also provided ongoing consultation and support directly to the Boost Foundation for IT tasks. We note that The Boost Foundation has just today revoked credentials that Sam had access to for the boost.org DNS account. Why? I ask again, how can we come to a mutually agreeable solution? Thanks

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 3:01 PM Marshall Clow wrote:

On Feb 16, 2024, at 11:26 AM, Vinnie Falco wrote:

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Samuel Darwin has been helping the release managers by updating and maintaining the release scripts, administering the infrastructure, and generally providing a continuation of the services that were formerly provided by Ciere Consulting.

As a release manager, I certainly appreciate all the work that Sam has put in to make our release infrastructure better.

In many cases we would not also have either a functioning site or working downloads without Sam's help, for which I am also grateful. Glen

On 2/16/24 12:34 PM, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

On Fri, Feb 16, 2024 at 10:33 AM David Sankel via Boost wrote:

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My big concern at this point is regarding trust. Do we want to hand over control of the Boost mailing lists and website to Vinnie?

What happens if/when Vinnie dies? Robert Ramey

Vinnie Falco wrote:

The site records whatever you give it, plus what is publicly available. If you enter your name we record that. When you sign up, an account is created which remembers settings. If you then, for example, submit a News item, then when a moderator approves the posting your screen name will appear along with your avatar as the author of the news item. And when someone clicks the name or avatar they will see your User Profile page. There will eventually be controls to let you decide what appears on that page. Right now I think there's nothing there except the avatar. But there will be things like, whether or not you are an author, how many reviews you've participated in, and so on.

Yes well there are a lot of ideas! The over-arching theme is to aggregate all of the publicly available information about you which is relevant to participation in Boost. How many GitHub issues you create, how many commits to boostorg repos do you make, how many reviews do you write or manage, and so on.

Hi Vinnie, Earlier you said something approximately "I don't know what our privacy policy is" - but actually you do; you have described it quite well when the question is asked in a different way, for example in the extracts I've quoted above. Your privacy policy is just a statement of what information you're going to collect and what you're going to do with it. You should also be clear that you're not going to collect anything from site visitors who don't log in, and you should say something about how registered users can have their info deleted (e.g. a "delete account" button). Andrey Semashev wrote:

I think, Boost website should be owned by Boost Foundation

The important question IMO is who is the "data controller" in the legal sense. I.e., to put it crudely, if someone wants to sue are they going to sue the Boost Foundation or C++ Alliance? I'd say we want C++ Alliance to be the Data Controller and take the legal responsibility for the site they've created; if not, there would need to be some sort of arrangement where the Foundation approves what C++ Alliance does. I guess that the boost.org domain is registered by the Foundation. (I can't tell for sure as the whois records are "redacted for privacy"; is that deliberate?). So I guess there is some sort of (informal?) agreement that allows C++ Alliance to point the DNS records at the new site, while in principle the Foundation retain ultimate control. If that's true, I would hope that a statement on the site saying "this website is operated by C++ Alliance, send all your legal correspondence to us" would be sufficient to establish them as Data Controller. But maybe it isn't - I am not a lawyer! Regards, Phil.

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 8:13 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

...what happens if The C++ Alliance ceases to exist?

That is a great question! We have thought about this, and note that the problem exists for whoever controls the boost.org domain. While I do not see the C++ Alliance going anywhere, we value and cherish the Boost C++ Library collection and want to make sure to mitigate as much risk as possible. To this end we have created a low-cost mirror of the current static website which can be pointed to in a DNS record if for some reason something happens to the new website. We also keep a copy of the website on hand in case there is some old information that we missed, so that we can refer back to it. And we also keep a copy for the case where the new website has an accessibility bug, so that affected users have continuity of access. ...what happens if The C++ Alliance...loses its interest in Boost?

The C++ Alliance is not one person who can "lose interest"; it is the sum of its non-profit charter (to contribute to C++) and the Staff Engineers who share the mission. These engineers are maintainers or authors of Boost libraries so what you are asking is what happens if all of the authors and maintainers of these Boost libraries suddenly decide they no longer wish to contribute to Boost? This seems unlikely...in fact we are suffering from the opposite problem. There are too many outstanding engineers who want to work with us and I feel terrible for turning them down due to budgets. Thanks

On 15/02/2024 17:36, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 8:13 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

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...what happens if The C++ Alliance ceases to exist?

That is a great question! We have thought about this, and note that the problem exists for whoever controls the boost.org domain. While I do not see the C++ Alliance going anywhere, we value and cherish the Boost C++ Library collection and want to make sure to mitigate as much risk as possible. To this end we have created a low-cost mirror of the current static website which can be pointed to in a DNS record if for some reason something happens to the new website. We also keep a copy of the website on hand in case there is some old information that we missed, so that we can refer back to it. And we also keep a copy for the case where the new website has an accessibility bug, so that affected users have continuity of access.

...what happens if The C++ Alliance...loses its interest in Boost?

...

The C++ Alliance is not one person who can "lose interest"; it is the sum of its non-profit charter (to contribute to C++) and the Staff Engineers who share the mission. These engineers are maintainers or authors of Boost libraries so what you are asking is what happens if all of the authors and maintainers of these Boost libraries suddenly decide they no longer wish to contribute to Boost? This seems unlikely...in fact we are suffering from the opposite problem. There are too many outstanding engineers who want to work with us and I feel terrible for turning them down due to budgets.

I think putting code into github and the BSL license are good guarantees in case website is no longer updated or the C++ Alliance is gone, the community can pick up the effort and continue the website, or invent a new one. I see no difference with the situation of a Boost library that is abandonware because the maintainer lost interest or sadly passes away, the community can continue the maintenance or invent a new library that replaces it. Best, Ion

On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 7:36 PM Vinnie Falco via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

the new site collects information as part of the login process where the old site does not.

But why do you need a login at all, in the first place? The TOS and privacy policy are moot, if there's no login nor cookies. What are you trying to track with a login? What "features" are login-gated?

On 2/14/24 8:14 AM, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 1:44 AM Dominique Devienne wrote:

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But why do you need a login at all, in the first place?

What if some potential user just wants to browse the web site, documentation, etc. etc. without loging in and submitting his informatiom or does not want to leave a trace. Will that be possible? Robert Ramey

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El 16/02/2024 a las 3:29, Louis Tatta via Boost escribió:

On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 9:05 PM Robert Ramey via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

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What if some potential user just wants to browse the web site, documentation, etc. etc. without loging in and submitting his informatiom or does not want to leave a trace. Will that be possible?

Yes.

I think this is an important point. My rule of thumb would be that users should be able to do everything that they can currently do in the current website without logging in. Best, Ion