[LEDE-DEV] OpenWRT tree vs LEDE tree

[David Lang]

On Thu, 19 May 2016, Daniel Curran-Dickinson wrote:

> Do I think there are potentially problems, like my, and others,
> impressions, that there is a fair amount of back channel (private) email
> that *isn't* part of the public discussion that I thing is contrary to
> the stated goal of transparency, if if the only reason is they think
> it's just trivial or trying to hash things out?  Then yes, I think there
> is *too much* back channel mail, and that if they're *serious* about
> transparency they will fix that, even if it's hard to adopt that working
> style.
>
> You know I personally am not afraid to go on the record with my thoughts
> and opinions, and I think that kind of approach is what it takes to do
> transparency right, if it can be uncomfortable and keeps a history of
> thing one might wish were not on the record.
>
>>
>> regarding the open decision-making process: *the* channel for any kind
>> of serious discussion should be the open mailing list.
>> - as others pointed out, irc plain does not work for such stuff. the
>>   whole concept of meetings (or generally real-time communication about
>>   non-trivial matters) doesn't work for many people, so just scratch it.
>> - alone the fact that "important stuff" happens "out of band" and needs
>>   to be actively collected by those "passively interested" is a problem.
>>   probably the problem that triggered bjoern's mail in the first place.
>
> Exactly.  It seems like there is still a lot of back channel talk that
> is not public.

Guys, give them a little time to transition here.

Not all conversations should be public.

does the concept of "don't play with matches in a powder magazine" make sense?

negotiations and discussions of blame/hurt feelings don't work well if there is 
a large crowd of hecklers around. They (both LEDE and OpenWRT folks) need to be 
able to meet and discuss history and the effects that it will have going forward 
without people second guessing every move and parsing every word for hidden 
meanings.

The LEDE folks flubbed the announcemnt, but that was only a couple weeks ago. 
These are people working on this part-time, they have families and jobs to deal 
with. It is going to take them time to figure out what and how to change and 
communicate the details between them.

Would you really like it if they started announcing changes, only to have other 
LEDE folks contradict them?

Focus on Code and Tools, you know, technical stuff. Let them have a little 
breathing room to figure out the governence stuff.

Watch what's changing, make suggestions, sure. But tone down the demands and 
criticism until they actually show that they aren't willing to change. So far 
they've seemed very willing to tweak things in response to suggestions.

David Lang