This is a request for comment about the future of POCO project*.

The POCO project team is soliciting feedback on the project itself, the development model, maintenance, releases and any other topic regarding the POCO project state of the affairs.

The current state of the project has some troubling aspects associated with it that we would like to rectify as soon as possible. In order to do that, we need your help. The development of POCO, as it currently stands, mostly depends on voluntary contributions. An obvious consequence is that we are not able to realize the plans as we would like to. While we are definitely grateful for any contribution, we feel that a project like POCO deserves better than that. Also, contributing a chunk of code is not the end of a contribution process. As written in a recent blog post, there’s much more to it and someone has to take further steps in order for the contribution to find it’s way into a release.

Given that the project already has a significant number of commercial users, we would especially like to encourage response from those entities in order to learn whether there is any interest in setting up an entity or a relationship overseeing the development of POCO. An example of “entity” would be a non-profit organization (e.g. Mozilla Foundation). An example of a relationship would be a sponsorship of POCO project or commercial support contract set up in a way similar to that of SQLite or a membership association similar to the SQLite Consortium. Additionally, we also encourage individuals, hobbyists and open source projects developers to respond with ideas and suggestions regarding this issue. Last but not least, the POCO Project page has a PayPal donate link, so please consider donating to the project as well.

The bottom line (and the reason for this request for comments) is, we would like to be able to have someone officially and professionally responsible for POCO project dedicating it certain amount of time every business day. This would initially likely be one person on a part-time basis, but depending on the interest, responses and establishment of said entities/relationships, it would eventually grow to full-time and more people. Needless to say, this would significantly improve the quality of the framework, the speed at which bugs are being fixed and releases published.

Here are few questions:

* Would you be willing to support POCO financially?
* Would you be willing to contribute the time of your employees?
* Are you in favor of non-profit entity and under what conditions would you join?
* Would you be willing to buy commercial support?
* Do you have any suggestions about the future of POCO project?

We feel that this is crucial for the future of POCO. If you like what we do and benefit from it, please consider responding. POCO is and shall remain free as both speech and beer. Regardless of the responses, the current project team shall continue doing its best to keep the project alive and healthy.

Thank you for your time.

POCO Project Team

* Anyone interested in any way, shape or form is encouraged to respond, publicly or privately. Should you require confidentiality, it will be fully guaranteed. In the latter case, send your comments to poco at appinf.com.

Generated using David A. Wheeler’s ‘SLOCCount‘ from current SVN trunk, rev. 661:

---

SLOC	Directory	SLOC-by-Language (Sorted)
88328	Foundation	cpp=69772,ansic=18556
86109	Data	ansic=52596,cpp=33513
26193	XML	cpp=20424,ansic=5769
23916	Net	cpp=23916
11642	WebWidgets	cpp=11642
7680	Util	cpp=7680
3974	NetSSL_OpenSSL	cpp=3974
2244	CppUnit	cpp=2244
990	PageCompiler	cpp=989
922	ApacheConnector	cpp=922
486	release	sh=486
118	dist	sh=118
103	build	sh=103
29	contrib	perl=29

---

cpp:	175076 (69.27%)
ansic:	76921 (30.44%)
sh:	707 (0.28%)
perl:	29 (0.01%)

---

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC) = 252,734
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 66.65 (799.85)
(Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months) = 2.64 (31.70)
(Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule) = 25.23
Total Estimated Cost to Develop = $ 9,004,062
(average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).

---

After crippled-C++ Symbian, Java-only Android and Objective-C iPhone platforms, finally some companies have seen the light and came up with LiMo.

Now we just have to wait to see the first POCO phone

I have redone some things in DynamicAny:

• Added support for empty state as default and empty() function to turn it into empty
• Made DynamicAnyHolder pure virtual functions (clone(), type() and all convert() and is…() overloads) virtual. All convert() overloads throw if reached at runtime, the querying is…() functions all return false. This has provided a much simpler (shorter) way to implement DynamicAnyHolder for an unknown type because only conversions provided by the holder must be overridden. Those not overridden shall throw BadCastException at runtime if attempted.
• Implemented clone(), type() and value() in DynamicAnyHolder<T>. Now, because of this and the previous item, DynamicAny can store any type out-of-the-box (no more DynamicAnyHolder specialization needed).

Code is in the SVN trunk. The only potentially code breaking change is the first one. If anyone encounters any surprises, please let me know.

There’s a blog entry on the topic. Your humble correspondent posted some examples and links to DynamicAny, which caused a Boost zealot to shoot back indiscriminately. Stay tuned

An interview (Part 1 and Part 2) with B. Stroustrup and H. Sutter taken during SDWest 08. Second part is particularly interesting - they discuss functional aspects of C++ (and some other languages). The bottom line, once again: multiparadigm - way to go.

A couple of interesting links to Grady Booch’s bits of wisdom.

In CIO, he talks about the 5 things he has learned about complex software systems:

• The fundamentals never go out of style.
• You need a regular rhythm of releases.
• Focus upon growing executable architectures.
• Create social structures that encourage innovation while still preserving predictability.
• Have fun.

Here’s a link to a (a bit lengthy, but worth hearing) speech at Yahoo:

If you like POCO, please consider voting. Description of the contest is here.

Although WebWidgets is not finished yet, I decided to commit WebWidgets to svn, so that you guys can take a first look.
Only VS80 solution files are recent now, events are still incomplete, and I am not really happy with the way ExtJS tables are rendered. Main development branch of WebWidgets is from now on the Subversion trunk branch. The old sandbox version will continue to live for a few weeks (maybe we can still reuse a bit from the code there).
For those willing to check it out: start the ExtJs testsuite in the bin folder, execute. Then open the generated HTML files in your web browser.
There is still plenty of work left…

We have some good news regarding the state of the POCO website. In summer, two interns will help us to do a major overhaul of the website. The following is planned:

• Some graphical/design facelifting
• Kick out tiki and replace it with MediaWiki and phpBB
• Integrate the user management of WordPress, MediaWiki and phpBB
• Implement a single-sign-on feature for WordPress, MediaWiki and phpBB

All existing tiki content (FAQ, Forums, Wiki) will be transferred to the new site. Work will start in July and we hope to complete the transition by September.