From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-08-19 16:07:58
At 03:51 PM 8/19/2002, David Abrahams wrote:
>Is there
>a way to encourage competition that brings benefits, yet preserves our
>collaborative spirit? Interesting question...
In some sense the preliminary discussions we often hold include a
competition between ideas, and that clearly has great benefit. But when we
talk about whole libraries it is harder to see how to do that beneficially.
It would be one thing if competing libraries already existed, and all Boost
had to do was decide which ones we preferred. Or maybe put both up on the
web and track use patterns over a long period of time.
But most Boost libraries are custom designed, one-off, efforts. My feeling
has always been that if we asked two developers to produce libraries with
the understanding that one would be thrown away, we wouldn't interest
quality developers.
Yes, it really will be interesting to see if anyone comes up with "a way to
encourage competition that brings benefits, yet preserves our collaborative
spirit."
--Beman