The future of the Ecosystem IS?

[René Ferdinand Rivera Morell]

During our meeting this Friday I'd like to discuss some developments
regarding the possible publishing of the C++ Ecosystem IS
(https://github.com/cplusplus/papers/issues/2005). For those that do
not know hereś the general proposal for the EcoIS
(https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2024/p2656r3.html).

Why am I wanting to talk about this? First, this would ultimately be a
vehicle for the CPS work to land in a more formal avenue. Second,
there have been recent developments and findings that impact the
ability of the work to continue in its current trajectory. Events that
have transpired:

* In the Summer wg21 meeting SG15 passed the initial draft and
forwarded it to EWG per the expected timeline.
* But EWG did not vote on the draft, which is a schedule slippage.
* I was also asked to remove the CC-BY license verbiage from the EcoIS drafts.
* During the meeting Jayesh and myself proposed publishing the EcoIS
using an open license method
(https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2024/p3339r0.html)
in the hope of justifying bringing back the CC-BY language.
* There were some internal wg21 back and forth regarding that paper.
The result was that the topic is out of scope for wg21
(https://github.com/cplusplus/papers/issues/2002#issuecomment-2232971877).
* In the Fall wg21 meeting SG15 added more content to the EcoIS.
* I asked again for EWG to take a vote on creating the ISO work item.
* The vote did not happen in EWG.
* In order to resolve the open-licence question we asked the ISO legal
department, per a suggestion from the wg21 convenor) for a finding on
the P3339 document.
* The ISO legal department essentially responded that they will not
consider it and that we should instead ask for a no-charge publication
allowance. We already know we don't qualify for such an allowance per
the new requirements published earlier this year.

This leaves us with a couple of problems:
* We've slipped on the schedule by at least 8 months. And I do not
have hope that we can recover the delay as wg21 has added for itself
more work for C++26 with the "profiles" proposals.
* We will not be able to publish in ISO using an open-license. Which
we believe essential for adoption.

Given that the EcoIS impacts the people in this group the most I´d
like to discuss how we can proceed. As we have some alternatives we've
come up with.

--
-- René Ferdinand Rivera Morell
-- Don't Assume Anything -- No Supone Nada
-- Robot Dreams - http://robot-dreams.net

[C++ Ecosystem Evolution]

This is definitely something I want some discussion about. I've added an agenda item. I'm happy to find as much bandwidth as we need to get a plan figured out on this.

Thanks, Rene.