[LEDE-DEV] openwrt and lede - remerge proposal

[Paul Oranje]

Dear David, dear community,
Please, see my comments below in-line.
With the highest esteem,
Paul

> Op 12 mei 2017, om 02:04 heeft David Lang <david at lang.hm> het volgende geschreven:
> 
> On Fri, 12 May 2017, Paul Oranje wrote:
> 
>>> Op 11 mei 2017, om 14:18 heeft Imre Kaloz <kaloz at openwrt.org> het volgende geschreven:
>>> On 2017-05-11 00:33, Paul Oranje wrote:
>>>>> Op 10 mei 2017, om 11:31 heeft Imre Kaloz <kaloz at openwrt.org> het volgende geschreven:
>>>>> On 2017-05-10 00:52, Jo-Philipp Wich wrote:
>>>> [cut]
>>>>> *) SPI
>>>>>>> - TBD post remerge
>>>>>> I'd prefer to tackle this first.
>>>>> Before the merge non-OpenWrt people are outsiders from both SPI's and the world's PoV. After the merge everyone can vote on these topics.
>>>> This does not feel right. The desire to have the ownership of the domain being properly handled before bringing the project - which currently is LEDE - back under the openwrt domain name is very reasonable. The fork this have a cause.
>>>> If I’ve misunderstood Imre’s position, please tell.
>>> You did :) If you take a look at the original mail from John, that "TBD" is there for SPI, the handling of the domain is before that point. This part is about how to pick and elect the liaisons, as it has been explained before in John's reply to Rafal.
>>> The SPI has a relationship with OpenWrt, not LEDE. When LEDE devs are OpenWrt devs, they "become visible" for SPI. It's matter of steps you have to do in order, nothing else.
>> Thank for the extra info.
>> So okay, but then agreement on the rules that governs the liason would probably still be required before.
>> 
>> Stating that OpenWrt has an exclusive position with SPI - certainly true for the name OpenWrt - ignores that the LEDE project itself now has so much to offer and momentum that it could very well consider self setting up a relation with SPI.
> 
> why should people spend time setting up a new relationship with SPI when the re-merge is going to let them use the existing one? That sounds like a lot of effort for nothing.
True, unneeded efforts are a waist. But when the existing relation of OpenWrt with SPI brings privileges for those that currently hold a position in OpenWrt, then it may be prudent to consider the odds.

> 
>>>>>>> - start pushing to the openwrt organisation
>>>>>> By force-overwriting the history of openwrt/openwrt ?
>>>>> No one said it won't cause a bit of pain, but would ease the transition on the long run.
>>>> Seems the solution to un-fork may cause more problems than it solves. And all that for just the name ?
>>> I don't think rebasing your changes is that much of a pain, and this only causes a hiccup for people who are using the OpenWrt git tree for real.
>> Probably true, but does concern pain of others ... Why wouldn’t the re-merged project have its living repository named LEDE ? Is that a problem ? (or is it wished for taht all commits on LEDE seem to be in openwrt ?)
> 
> The decision was made last year that the resulting codebase would be the LEDE codebase, the OpenWRT devs were given commit rights to the LEDE repo so that they could migrate over anything they considered significant.
> 
> So why would there be a separate LEDE and OpenWRT repo?
Why would the OpenWrt repo be re-animated ?
New commits are push onto LEDE and OpenWrt will just not accept any new commits and remain in its current state. This scenario would not bring any disadvantages, would it ?
Personally it doesn't matter much, the opinion of most active devs should, of coarse, be regarded more relevant.

> 
> 
>> What I referred to is that LEDE explicitly decided not to issue e-mail addresses in order to avoid that such address would place some people in a special position, in order to avoid undue discrimination. Making exceptions could amount to some being more equal than others.
> 
> There is 'some are more equal than others' and there is not breaking existing communications channels.
> 
> 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.
> 
> It has been decided that such addresses should not be handed out and generally used going forward, but it's a reasonable compromise to keep the old addresses working (redirecting to personal mailboxes or becoming mailing lists that the voting members of the project can subscribe to).
Redirection of __all__ @openwrt mail addresses to appropriate mailing lists seems practical and reasonable and would prevent unwanted personal privileges.

> 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.
That the LEDE devs do not want @opentwrt.org addresses seems not to be a personal preference, but a well weighted policy to avoid that such addresses would be used for unwanted purposes.

> It seems like you are getting upset on the behalf of others, who aren't themselves upset. That doesn't seem like a productive thing.
You are right that I question some ideas - I’m not upset - that would not directly have personal consequences for me. But this discussion is precisely about the policies and rules of the project at large, not about some personal preference.
I do read some criticism to this mingling-in and since it absolutely is not my aim to provoke such discussions, I will refrain from actively taking part in this discussion unless it is made clear that such contributions are appreciated (or when I am really upset, but that would be unlikely).

>>> Intentions do matter until you've created the rules, after that the rules might not serve the original intentions. Anyways, I only wanted to point out that the current LEDE rules aren't perfect either. Don't get me wrong, the OpenWrt ones [1] [2] weren't perfect either, specially because the majority didn't care about them.
> 
> It seems that this is again a case of you being concerned on the behalf of others. The discussions that have been taking place have included discussions on the rules. If there are OpenWRT devs that are unhappy with the LEDE rules, I would be expecting them to be speaking up in these discussions, and not in general terms, but with what they specifically are unhappy with.
First, the above commented quote is of Imre’s writing. But anyhow, the point I tried to make and which Imre commented, is that intentions serve well a flexible application of a rule, and that presumed inflexibility of a rule should not do away with the intentions of that rule.
Besides, but I could be wrong on that, I thought that in the discussions on a merge the assumption was that the LEDE rules were supposed to sustain. That should not make discussion on the rules impossible, but discussions that question the intentions, the ideas behind the rules, obviously are more likely to make more waves.

> It almost sounds like you are trolling to stir up trouble where the principals in the negotiation have not been disagreeing significantly.
I would be very sorry if that would be the effect. I’ll take this as a warning to be careful. It’s okay to warn me of this.

> David Lang
> 
> P.S. there is no blanket ban of LEDE discussion on the OpenWRT forums, but I know that there are various people who have considered discussion of LEDE (or DD-WRT, etc) to be off topic and have tried to shut down any discussions related to it. I don't see this as being a policy, but rather the sort of thing that happens when you have a bunch of people with modorator powers making independent discussions.