Hey guys,
This might be a bit lengthy, but I should get this off my chest. I feel
people are mostly looking at the upside and glossing over the negatives,
which is a time bomb, and both projects do not deserve this. Paul's
e-mail [0] already touches a lot of the relevant points, and it
motivated me to add my own insights to what so far seems to have been a
'good news show' as we say in Dutch.
While, like most people, I'm happy progress has been made towards a
re-merge, there still seems quite some passive-agressive behaviour
present coming from certain people championing OpenWrt [1] - which, from
where I stand, seemed one of the reasons for starting LEDE. Stifling
'free' speech (recently, even to the point of removing messages about
the pending re-merge on the OpenWrt forums) was another one; clearly,
that one is still very much present as well. One could say old habits
die hard, but it still feels like par for the course. What's up with
that? You want to remerge with the LEDE project, yet you cannot tolerate
any discussion about the actual process on the OpenWrt forums? That's
some fine duplicity right there.
I can't help but feel very uneasy about this. I'm not implying people
who stuck with OpenWrt don't want the best for the project and community
(most do), but we all know LEDE was created to remedy exactly these (and
other) shortcomings, which made OpenWrt languish to the point it had
come to a standstill. Not only did LEDE try to tackle these problems; it
has succeeded beyond expectation. Developers are more accessible, you
can actually talk to people instead of getting your head bit off,
contributions are booming, and the atmosphere overall is friendly and
helpful. Discussion is encouraged, not repressed Soviet-style.
Some of the OpenWrt veterans come across as if they want the re-merge to
be rushed, ignoring the actual issues that caused the fork in the first
place. In itself, the desire to re-merge might a noble intent, if it
didn't taste so much like driven by ulterior, more selfish motives. At
the same time, while OpenWrt have little to offer beyond the OpenWrt
name and legacy (which, at this point, feels more and more rotten to me,
despite all the good things that once came from it), they field some
pretty hard nos - very astonishing, given the position they are in: no
to abandoning the OpenWrt name, no to abandoning the OpenWrt 'house
style' [1]. Luckily, not everyone shares that same attitude [2], but it
leaves a very bad taste. Almost like some people haven't learnt from the
whole ordeal, and went back to their old ways pretty quickly.
It feels pushy, and seems to boil down to 'it's all fine and dandy what
you did, but it's still OpenWrt; don't get any illusions, you're not
running the show'. This is very toxic, even more so when you realise
that an overwhelming majority of active (!) OpenWrt developers either
started or joined the LEDE project. Some of the vocal veterans sticking
with OpenWrt hardly contribute any code anymore, and haven't done so in
a while, or other valuable input, but they were most vocal when the
split happened, pointing fingers and accusing people (ironically, people
who *did* contribute code, actively maintained infrastructure, and had
the interests of the project and community at heart). Again, they are
yelling the hardest now, and waving that OpenWrt flag like there's no
tomorrow. Imre nothing short of ignores the whole LEDE effort by stating
explicitly that LEDE 17.01 (which Hauke put forward as an official
OpenWrt 15.01 successor in an initial communication draft about the
merge [3]) was NOT its successor [4]. Combined with his push for the
OpenWrt name and keeping pretty much everything else OpenWrt (the
dysfunctional homepage, the forums), it reeks of a coverup: LEDE was a
hiccup, an anomaly, a gene malfunction, something that needs to be
corrected and removed from the 'history books' as soon as possible, so
it can all feel hunky dory again - and mostly, so it looks and smells
like OpenWrt. By now, that smell has turned into quite a stench though.
Luckily, the industry and a lot of end users seem to be impervious to
it...
For me, the OpenWrt name and project by now feels tainted. For months on
end, you could browse the OpenWrt forums, or hang in #openwrt and never
catch a dev or someone who knew what was (or wasn't) going on. Backends
went down, sites disappeared, and it doesn't help to keep pointing to
the OpenWrt name 'because the industry only knows OpenWrt', or 'because
end users still don't know about LEDE'. Linux has been around for two
decades now, and a lot of people with a computer still haven't heard of
it. Before Mozilla, the internet only knew IE. Before Linux, sysadmins
only knew Unices. Anyway, plenty of comparisons at hand - you get the
gist. OpenWrt has served its purpose. It is time to part ways.
It looks like some people have resigned to adopting the name again for
the greater good, because they want this mess to be over with
(understandably). The last vote tally I found [3] was a tie on the most
contentious issue - the name. A week ago [4], Hauke states there is a
majority in favour of re-adopting the OpenWrt name. I have been looking
up and down but seem to have overlooked the final tally - I cannot find
it? Can somebody link me?
I'm sure a lot of people want this to be fixed, want things to be right
again. Most of those have the best interests of the community and both
projects in mind, but some do not, and the latter seem to be waging a
war of attrition. I enjoy being part of the LEDE community. I never felt
OpenWrt was much of a community in the months prior to the fork, and I'd
hate to see LEDE go the same way as OpenWrt right before. There will be
infighting again, snide remarks, stalled development... And meanwhile,
people will say 'hey we need new blood', but that won't come with such a
backstabbing culture.
My two cents.
Cheers
Stijn Segers
[0] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-dev/2017-May/007403.html
[1] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-dev/2017-May/007342.html
[2] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-dev/2017-May/007347.html
[3] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-adm/2017-May/000461.html
[4] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-adm/2017-May/000462.html
[5] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-adm/2017-March/000436.html
[6] http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-adm/2017-May/000461.html
_______________________________________________
openwrt-devel mailing list
openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org
https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
