[LEDE-DEV] [OpenWrt-Devel] Talks between OpenWrt and LEDE

[David Lang]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2016, Kathy Giori wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 11:31 PM, John Crispin <john at phrozen.org> wrote:
>>
> [..]
>> i am still very much in favour of having 2 trees, one stable and one dev
>> tree. this would allow everyone to choose what they think fits their
>> needs best.
>
> I too have liked this idea since I first heard it.


This sounds good at first listen, but doesn't actually work.

tl;dr this is a "I think you should do a lot of boring work" plan. nobody is 
volunteering to do the work

people don't want a 'stable branch' with only known good stuff in it, they want 
a 'stable' branch with all the latest features added, but none of the bugs that 
go with those features.

If you could identify the bugs, they wouldn't be buggy in the bleeding edge 
version.

It also takes a lot of manpower to maintain the stable branch, and those 
people are not able to work on anything new and interesting (because such 
development is, by definition, not yet stable)

It also generates a LOT of support questions, esepecially of the "why doesn't X 
work in the stable branch yet"

The OpenWRT folks have said that they are not willing to become the 'stable' 
developers, if they merge the trees/projects, they want to be able to work on 
whatever they want without being tied down with some sort of 'stable' criteria

If you think it's a great idea, organize a team to make stable versions of what 
OpenWRT/LEDE release. If you are able to sustain the results for a few versions, 
people may start to trust and use it (or they may just use the more up-to-date 
tree)

David Lang (who has no authority within LEDE or OpenWRT)