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I confess I am one of those people who has benefited much more than
I have contributed to the OpenWRT development group. I run a small
company in which I am the chief developer, administrator, customer
support dude, marketer, and salesguy. I would LOVE to be able to
contribute more to the OpenWRT community, and I do try to test
things that are in my way and report what I find from those tests,
but I certainly don't feel I pull my weight.<br>
<br>
However, in my defense, as you can probably surmise from the
description of my job, we're not exactly rolling in extra money or
time to contribute. Which I regret, but it is what it is. Anyone
interested in joining a currently unfunded startup using OpenWRT,
please get in touch.<br>
<br>
I recently purchased a WiFi access point that I realized upon
plugging it in was running a somewhat restricted version of OpenWRT.
I won't say who makes it, but it's a very clever, one might say
ingenious, product that I like very much.<br>
<br>
However, when I looked at the OpenWRT tree, I could not find an
OpenWRT build for this particular device. And that, I must say, has
REALLY annoyed me - the company clearly expended some resources to
port OpenWRT to their clever device, and certainly benefits from it,
but they apparently did not contribute the work they did to support
this device back to the community so it could be "officially" part
of the OpenWRT ecosystem.<br>
<br>
I have also been painfully aware of the infrastructure difficulties
that OpenWRT has faced, and I have been quietly admiring the work of
those who keep it running as well as it does. As scary as it was
when IBM got deeply involved in Linux back in the early 2000s, for
instance, I would say their involvement has benefited both parties.<br>
<br>
OpenWRT is actually a pretty mature and popular codebase, and it
deserves much better infrastructure than it has now. In order to get
a better infrastructure, of course, we need, as a community, to
attract partners with the ability to contribute that infrastructure.
It's great to be in a project that is not beholden to any big
companies UNTIL you actually want to get something significant done.
Pragmatism has its place.<br>
<br>
That's why I was a bit taken aback at the reluctance to embrace
prpl's offer. I would like to see an organization in which all
possible partners should be welcomed into the community; while we
should be appropriately cautious about accepting code from anyone,
and subject it to strict review as to suitability, fit with mission
and architecture, and quality, we should be pulling partners in, not
holding them at arm's length. My hope is that LEDE will either bring
this level of pragmatism or will enable OpenWRT to be more
pragmatic.<br>
<br>
Of course, we have to be clear about the mission, architecture, and
the standards of suitability and quality... perhaps that is the
departure point for LEDE? I, for one, am eager to better understand,
in full atomic granularity, the problems that have led to this
departure and what, again, in atomic granularity, LEDE proposes to
do differently.<br>
<br>
My thinking is that, if OpenWRT or LEDE is able to attract more
support from the corporate world, it will serve as an example to
those who are using OpenWRT/LEDE of what is expected of a larger
company that is gaining from the use of the software, hopefully
pressuring them to step up and be better members of the community. I
also think that it will lead to more visibility, which can help
bring in folks like me who have an idea and can leverage off of
OpenWRT/LEDE to produce products that are out of the mainstream. <br>
<br>
I'm not privy to all, indeed, any, of the discussions that have led
to this point of departure; I am commenting as a strict outsider. My
simple desire is to see the codebase continue to grow, in both code
and users, and the community to be as open and welcoming as
possible. I hope that this move will help achieve that for at least
one of the resultant groups. And I shall do what I can to help
either or both. My last comment is that the more open of the two
communities is likely to be the one where I can most easily see how
I might contribute.<br>
<br>
-Bill<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Bill Moffitt
Ayrstone Productivity LLC
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