[LEDE-DEV] [OpenWrt-Devel] Introducing the LEDE project

[Luka Perkov]

>On 2016-05-05 20:22, mbm wrote:
>> On 5/5/2016 7:40 AM, Felix Fietkau wrote:
>>> Many of the changes that we previously tried to introduce were often 
>>> squashed by internal disagreements. Resulting discussions often turned 
>>> toxic quickly and led to nothing being done to address the issues. 
>>> Setting up the LEDE project was our way of creating a testbed for 
>>> changes that we believe are important for the survival of the project. 
>>
>> Change is not easy. Discussions need to happen. The problem is simply
>> kicking out people you didn't agree with by starting a new organization
>> in secret; you've created the public perception that we're somehow
>> against you when really we all want the same things.
>
> Years of internal discussion led nowhere. Maybe it helps now that we're
> making the whole issue public.

For the sake of transparency, we've had public discussions, about a number of
things, for example switching to Git:

- https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-October/036390.html
- https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-October/036480.html
- https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-October/036486.html
- https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2015-October/036500.html

And based on these inputs from you the switch was not made even though several
OpenWrt developers wanted to switch.

Also, server outages can happen to anybody:
- https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2016-January/038547.html

However, we do not want to point fingers. What we do want is to make a great
community around OpenWrt and to drive innovation - just like it has been done
for more then a decade now. 

There has been a long history - mostly good, sometimes bad - since the project
started from a garage project, to now having a project used by an awesome
amount of users. This can be seen from the constructive discussions in this
list on a daily basis, and in this very thread. Also, the project is used as
the main SDK by many silicon vendors internally, and by vast number of
companies on the embedded market.

We are open for a discussion and would like to keep the OpenWrt's and it's
community interests in the first place. Splitting the project does not make
sense. Do you agree?

>>> We appreciate your effort to have an open discussion about this, 
>>> however the sudden deletion of our widely published openwrt.org email 
>>> addresses somewhat undermines this. We will not respond in kind and we 
>>> will continue to maintain the critical parts of OpenWrt infrastructure 
>>> that we control.
>>
>> Let's be clear on this subject; no commit access was revoked, you still
>> have full read and write access to the entire OpenWrt tree.
>>
>> Email forwarding was temporarily disabled following the LEDE announcement
>> - LEDE's own rules prohibit project based email addresses
> No, they don't. They state that the LEDE project won't provide project
> email addresses. Interpreting that as meaning that we shouldn't be able
> to access our openwrt.org addresses is more than a bit of a stretch.

In any case, due to the events that happened and the fact that the OpenWrt name
is being used in a manner opposite of the projects best interest, we felt that
these actions were needed in order to avoid the further damages to the project.

>> - It's unclear if LEDE still represents OpenWrt
> So? Asking us to not send any further emails about LEDE from our
> openwrt.org addresses should have been enough.

Actually, this was discussed on #lede-adm.

>> My hope is that this whole LEDE vs OpenWrt situation can be resolved.
> I hope so too.

That is good to hear. Bringing the issue to a more public discussion might
speed up resolving them, but it is in everyone's best interest to get them
resolved.

Since so far there has not been a presented reason why the proposals made could
not be incorporated in main OpenWrt as well it still remains unclear what
benefits brings splitting the project. I propose we work together to come up
with a unified solution that all the community will benefit from.

Luka