[C++-sig] Re: Custom by value type to python type conversion

[Bob Ippolito]

On Nov 6, 2003, at 11:39 PM, Niall Douglas wrote:

> On 6 Nov 2003 at 17:39, David Abrahams wrote:
>
>>> (I am grateful for the info - thanks - it just annoys me when this
>>> happens, and it's not been the first time either).
>>
>> Get over it; this is free software.  We do the best we can with the
>> resources we have and the contributions of others.
>
> I have never and will never believe any reasoning that just because
> software is free that its quality should be inherently less than any
> commercial software. As books on good software design have noted
> since the 1970's, software can be as technically brilliant as it
> likes but without solid documentation, it can never be better than an
> average solution. Quality requires good documentation.
>
> I'll put together a doc patch and send it in.

If you have better ideas, send patches (as you're doing, which is 
great).  As Dave said, it's free software, they're giving it to you.  
Not only are they giving it to you, but they don't force you to comply 
with a restrictive license like the GPL.  You're lucky that they offer 
free support.  It's a bit much to ask a free software project to live 
up to every definition of good software in the books you've been 
reading the past 30 some years.  If you want quality documentation (or 
anything else that they don't want to do for free), do it yourself, or 
pay someone to do it.  I hear a place called "Boost Consulting" has 
some top notch people that know quite a bit about Boost and would 
probably be more than happy to trade services for money :)

-bob