[OpenWrt-Devel] Introducing the LEDE project

[Daniel Dickinson]

On 16-05-04 07:32 PM, Kathy Giori wrote:
> 
> Daniel I fully concur that industry "give back" is severely lacking.
> It seems to me that the bigger the company, the less likely they are
> to give back. One of the goals of the prpl Foundation was to help big
> industry members to better "see" that problem, and to use prpl to help
> them do something about it.

That is definitely a worthwhile goal, that I'd like come to fruition.

> 
> I see two main reasons for the lack of contributions problem (not
> developer fault).
> 1. short-term focus. Industry rushes to meet product release schedules
> and managers are too often not aware of the downstream maintenance
> burdens they will face later, by not integrating their changes
> properly into the Linux kernel (and OpenWrt).
> 2. legal. I could blab about this problem for days, but mainly there
> is a fear of open source licensing when compared to the value of
> giving back. This type of FUD problem is perhaps one that prpl could
> help address too, through educational efforts.

That matches my experiences.

> 
> As an example of a contribution, prpl is promoting the OpenWrt "board
> farm" project, intended to support automated testing (of trunk) on
> various platforms on a daily basis. The test framework was in fact
> contributed by industry.
> 
> Now imagine the new problem that industry faces if they want to give
> back. Do they have to push changes back into two different/similar
> project branches? Do they need to setup two board farms or double the
> test time? Will some companies choose to push to OpenWrt and others to
> LEDE, leaving the end-user to figure out which project's software will
> run on their board?
> 
> In my opinion, the OpenWrt core team members need to setup some
> policies and procedures (e.g., take ideas from the LEDE objectives)

Not being an insider this is only a guess, but it seems to me that
efforts to reach an internal solution have been stymied by some
part(y|ies) that balk at what the LEDE team wants to see happen, and the
LEDE team is tired of fighting when they are the ones (at least to
outside appearances) the ones doing the majority of the work.

> that allow the fairness and flexibility that is desired, so that only

TBH I don't think it's the LEDE team that needs to get that message.

> one OpenWrt development branch continues to be developed. Reducing the
> core team to the LEDE subgroup will take away from the diversity of
> the project at the core, and I don't see that as a good thing. Yes,
> collaboration in a diverse environment is harder, but research has
> shown repeatedly that companies with staff diversity perform better.

Collaboration requires the cooperation of those you are supposed to
collaborate with, and willingness of both sides to be flexible.  Not
knowing the specifics I can't speak to whether this is a case of mutual
inflexibility or one-sided.  Certainly some of the members of the LEDE
team seem to be people who attempt to reach mutual satisfactory
conclusions, and one individual in particular emailed my privately when
I was upset and expressed it on list, and helped me to see things
differently, and I believe that individual is also part of the reason
the problems listed as reasons for the fork have been publicly acknowledged.

Regards,

Daniel
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