On Sat, 2012-04-07 at 11:28 +0100, R. Diez wrote: > > > +For general information about Or1ksim, post to both OpenRISC mailing > > lists: > > + > > + [email protected] > > + [email protected] > > + > > +(yes we do mean crosspost - they have disjoint sets of readers). > > > >The following process applies to both the SVN HEAD and release > >branches. > >+ > >+* Submit the patch to both OpenRISC mailing lists > > > I tend to posts patches from time to time, and I feel that you are > abusing your position of power in or1ksim in order to pursue a > political > agenda, namely that you would like to move all OpenRISC development > to > OpenCores.org . You are trying to get all OpenRISC source code under > OpenCores' Subversion and move all mailing list traffic there too.
Hi Ruben, That is a most unfair accusation, and I am not sure why you are making it. Openrisc.net was set up by Jonas Bonn, one of the major recent professional contributors to the OpenRISC project in April 2011. He set it up to provide functionality, particularly mailing lists, a Wiki and later git support, which he felt was missing from the main opencores.org website. He also disliked the requirement at that time to register even for read access to the source code. Those were issues that many of us across the community agreed with. The owners of opencores.org, ORSoC AB, responded after a couple of months by providing mailing lists, which is why there are OpenCores mailing lists, an opencores Wiki and git support. And it has to be clear that the pressure from Jonas was important in making those changes happen. We had a meeting of many of the major OpenRISC contributors in Stockholm last July. Johan Rilegard, the CEO of ORSoC AB and Marcus Erlandsson, their CTO took part, as did I, Jonas Bonn, Julius Baxter, Olof Kindgren, Stefan Kristiansson and a number of others you will recognize from IRC and the mailing lists. It is perhaps worth noting that many of the major contributors to this meeting are not just hobbyists, but are or have been paid professional contributors. My company, Embecosm, was paid to develop the GCC 4.5 tool chain to production standard, Olof works for ORSoC AB, Julius used to work for ORSoC AB, Jonas was paid to develop Linux for OpenRISC. We discussed many things, including what we felt was wrong with OpenCores and how it was managed. We discussed the possibility of setting up OpenCores as an independent foundation, but ORSoC AB made it clear this was not a route they were ready for. I for one was willing to accept this, having lived through the period in 2007 when opencores.org ran without commercial backing and was almost unusable. Jonas was asked if he would merge his openrisc.net OpenRISC mailing list into the opencores.org OpenRISC mailing list. He indicated he was prepared to consider this, but so far has not taken up the offer. In the meantime *all* those present agreed to cross-post to both mailing lists, to ensure no one was left out. That is why for example the openrisc.net wiki and mailing lists are promoted and linked to from the opencores.org website. Up until the last few weeks everyone has been happy to do that. I am not sure why you feel it is so important to break that concensus. > In this particular case, the OpenCores list has little traffic that's > not already in this list, and forcing the cross-posting on us is in my > view a move to undermine this list in the hope that it will fade out > of existence. Not true I am afraid. When you register at OpenCores for the OpenRISC project you are by default also registered for the opencores.org OpenRISC mailing list. So the OpenCores mailing list has a much wider readership, although most active contributors are registered on both lists. > In a truly open environment, the maintainers would be happy to take > any patches they can get, with whatever means, whether the patch's > body is inlined or not. Should they have a concern about the patch's > contents, they would then discuss it themselves with other maintainers > or interested people wherever they like, without forcing anybody to > post to any list in particular. Personally I don't care whether patches are inlined or not, since my mail client will inline text attachments for me anyway. However it is a widely accepted convention in the open source software community, and as you will note from Stefan Kristiansson's email this morning, others like it. In particular git can accept inlined mail messages directly (using git am). All projects have agreed mailing lists to use for patch submission. Just try posting a GCC patch to the GDB mailing list if you don't believe me. In the case of OpenCores the community has been happy for the past year to cross-post to two mailing lists, recognizing that we have an unresolved issue. Now one of the great strengths of open source is that you can fork projects. However with forking comes a risk - you divide your forces. It has happened once already before. Beyond Semiconductor (http://www.beyondsemi.com/page/) split off as a commercial operation to develop OpenRISC based chips, taking with it Damjan Lampret, Matjaz Breskvar and other OpenCores founders, and their input to the project has now been lost. Open source hardware is still small. If we are to change the commercial proprietary world, we must stay unified and with a single clear presence in the world. For the past 13 years, OpenCores has been that single clear presence, and I have not seen a compelling argument from anyone to change that. I hope this explains the background, and you will realize I was documenting the agreed community position. Something I have been doing at OpenCores for the past decade. Best wishes, Jeremy -- Tel: +44 (1590) 610184 Cell: +44 (7970) 676050 SkypeID: jeremybennett Email: [email protected] Web: www.embecosm.com _______________________________________________ OpenRISC mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openrisc.net/listinfo/openrisc
