[LEDE-DEV] openwrt and lede - remerge proposal

[David Lang]

On Fri, 12 May 2017, Stijn Segers wrote:

> David Lang wrote:
>
>> The (soon to be former) LEDE developers don't want @openwrt.org addresses, 
>> so
>> providing a way to not break the existing addresses and not giving out new 
>> ones
>> doesn't seem like it is upsetting to any of the developers.
>
> Let's not get ahead of ourselves. The thread title states 'proposal', and as 
> far as I understand it, it's a 'package deal' that still has to be voted on.

true, but there si a lot in it that is the result of negotiations between the 
developers already. It seems like there are now some outsiders who have not been 
part of the discussions (and who may not be active developers) who are 
expressing concerns and seem unaware of the details of the rules that have been 
proposed.

>> There is 'some are more equal than others' and there is not breaking existing 
>> communications channels.
>
> The aftermath of the split showed there's good reason for disabling them 
> altogether: people using their @openwrt e-mail addresses to claim legitimacy 
> and authority while being barely visible in the day-to-day dealings of the 
> project.
>
>> You can never eliminate @openwrt.org addresses from all the documentation 
>> on the
>> Internet, or from everyone's address books, so it makes sense to have the
>> existing addresses keep working.
>
> Indeed you cannot, but you could obsolete existing addresses perfectly fine, 
> and just have them forward e-mail to one general contact address.

well, I'm an outsider, but one who has been through a similar situation with a 
work e-mail that I used for too much stuff at one point.

The stated problem is people using @openwrt e-mail addresses to claim authority, 
and it seems that there is agreement that people should not be able to send from 
@openwrt e-mail addresses.

So far, so good.

But breaking inbound addresses, especially quickly, causes problems as well. 
Thus the suggestions to either:

turn them into mailing lists that multiple people can subscribe to (for things 
like official contact e-mails, security notifications, domain registrations, 
etc)

or for the personal addresses, change them into inbound-only forwarders so that 
anyone who has he old addresses in address books and uses them for personal 
communications, will still get the messages through, but people will not be able 
to send from the addresses to claim legitimacy/authority.

This personal e-mail address forward could be done as a short term thing, but I 
know from personal experience that after making a change, mail will trickle in 
to the old address for a long time, so I think it's also reasonable to not put a 
time limit on it, setup the forwards and forget it (unless someone starts 
abusing it by continuing to hand out a personal @openwrt address, which will be 
pretty obvious)

David Lang