[LEDE-DEV] openwrt and lede - remerge proposal

[Florian Fainelli]

On 05/12/2017 12:48 PM, Stefan Peter wrote:
> On 12.05.2017 20:39, Florian Fainelli wrote:
>> On 05/12/2017 10:51 AM, Val Kulkov wrote:
>>>> On 12.05.2017 15:07, Mauro Mozzarelli wrote:
>>> IMO the question should be "should the merged project be called OpenWRT or not".
>>
>> This is absolutely not the question, this is only one of the questions.
>> The larger question that you are all raising is the following: do we
>> want some, every, part of decision(s) that the project(s) make to be
>> fully participative and include the entire community?
> 
> Sorry, no, IMHO this is one of the core questions here, at least. The
> OpenWrt <-> LEDE fork happened due to the fact that some (most?) of the
> OenWrt developers felt that they did not have enough weight in the
> decisions taken by the project.

Yes, developers, that is the key word here. They are representative of
an user base (which btw, could have spoken about that issue before as well).


> From the comments on this thread, I get the impression the quite some
> non-committing members of the community feel the same: The didn't even
> get asked about their opinion regarding the naming or the structure of
> the organisation that will result from the merge. And we all have our
> opinions, and some of us need to sell the results of the committing
> developers to their management. Shouldn't we as users and supporters and
> whatnot get the chance to be heard, at least?

You are being heard already, should we conduct a poll to ask you about
every single bullet point made on this re-merge proposal? OK, so if we
do that:

- is everyone qualified to make a good decision on each action item?
Does qualification of the people do matter at all?

- is there a chance we can get constructive feedback if we ask the wider
audience? This email thread tends to support the contrary

- how do we evaluate whether your opinion is biased or not?

- what if we listen to you, but still decide to go our own direction
because we feel it's best if we do that?

- what if until the two projects are unified again we just do what is
best to get us there, and let people be more involved after that? It's
not a single man project, so chances of being correctly represented as a
user are more than likely already

> 
>> This raises a bunch of interesting questions, but quite frankly I think
>> this will result exactly in where we are now: talks and talks, and
>> nothing happening for real because it raises way too many questions that
>> are completely outside of the real of an open source project in its
>> current stage IMHO.
> 
> Yes, I feel with you: I really need to known how this sad OpenWrt/LEDE
> story continues, too. But I feel that before decisions can be taken. it
> has to be clear who can take these decisions. Otherwise, this whole
> blaming and moaning we have witnessed will start anew.

What is happening right now, is the exact reverse of the expected
outcome (or if it is, this seriously a wicked plan). Most, if not all
OpenWrt and LEDE devs have positively responded to the re-merge
proposal, yet we keep reading emails that greatly side track the plan of
action.

So let me repeat this: I care a lot about users, about developers and
about the image of both projects, but right now I think we, as
developers need to make decisions that do not involve the entire
user-base, because we are still technically divided, and we are not a
shape where any of this feedback is bringing anything positive.

What needs to happen tough, which is exactly the purpose of this
original email is keep people informed about what is going to happen.

> 
> 
>> Things like: for how long should a decision be submitted to the
>> community, how many people can constitute a majority, should there be
>> decisions not submitted to the public are all valid, but I don't think
>> using OpenWrt and LEDE as a vessel is the right thing right now.
> 
> I never said that this would be easy, forking a project always is easier
> than re-merging, I think.

Honestly, it was not easy between LEDE and OpenWrt developers, but here
we are: there is a re-merge proposal, and now it is getting even harder
because everyone feel like they have something to say about it.

That is absolutely not fair to any of the people in either OpenWrt or
LEDE that have been working on their own differences of opinion, talked
to each other to try to bring people together and so on.


> I just wanted to bring in to the discussion
> the fact that the whole OpenWrt/LEDE projects future plans affects more
> than just the committing developers. It really would be nice if the
> whole community would get a way to speak up. Even better if the powers
> that are could decide upon to let us grunts to participate in the
> decisions. But this is for the committers to decide.

That I agree with, thank you.
-- 
Florian