Hi.
I think there is a little misunderstanding about this topic.
As many know here for OpenWrt doesn't quiet work as the same for a
company's project where you may have dedicated people to a project.
People work in the stuff they get interested and give some attention to
whatever is agreed by the project guidelines.
I am sure developers will continue to dedicate most of their time to the
newer and trunk versions and if agreed to extend LEDE 17.01 EOL to it as
well whenever is strictly necessary.
The idea put is to extend LEDE 17.01 EOL a little while (not forever)
because it has been reported by a significant amount of people that
18.06 is not an option anymore for a large amount of older but still
usable devices due its bigger footprint. Also to minimize the amount of
attention it may require the idea is not to have new features but only
critical security and bug fixes. If 18.06 was an option this would not
be necessary but as there has been significant improvements to this
version then extending LEDE 17.01 EOL becomes justifiable given the
number of active devices that still benefit for it.
Best regards
Fernando
On 12/11/2018 20:39, Alberto Bursi wrote:
On 12/11/18 21:57, Fernando Frediani wrote:
Totally agree with Luiz. That was the idea behind this proposal and
you managed to even easier words.
Alberto, the tiny subtarget you mentioned doesn't really seem to run
well or stably for 18.06 on many of these devices regardless the
flash size, that's the main point.
As mentioned there are many new devices still coming with 32MB of RAM
and which can take benefit of OpenWrt for various reasons and usages.
I think for many of us here are completely fine to put some extra
cash and buy a newer hardware to cope with OpenWrt evolution but the
reality is that majority of people are not. Another example I wanted
to put to illustrate is an ISP that has thousands of existing devices
with similar specs running, being still able to keep using OpenWrt
more securely while they start to introduce newer hardware to their
customer base allowing to make a more smooth transition to these more
powerful hardware.
I quite frankly don't believe it's worth allocating what limited
manpower there is. While I'm not a OpenWrt developer and I don't speak
on behalf of the project, I really believe that you are
underestimating the effort required behind even a basic LTS release
like a "only core packages" or such. I think that if translated into
man-hours (and therefore money) it would amount to much higher than
just letting devices go EOL and have people replace them.
The ISP can pay for someone to do this job if they think really need
it (but imho it would be better to spend their funds in newer
hardware, besides they should have planned for hardware obsolescence
already).
As a point of comparison, even Debian that is far larger than OpenWrt
only agreed to extend the support period for its old release (which is
a "mostly core packages" affair too, kernel, basic userspace and
server software) after some sponsors showed up and paid for it.
-Alberto
Regards
Fernando
On 12/11/2018 18:20, Luiz Angelo Daros de Luca wrote:
Hello,
There are a significant amount of devices out there that has 4/32
specs. Even brand new ones.
If there is stability issues with newer OpenWrt versions on those
devices, we should rethink LEDE EOL.
Maintenance burden is directly related to the amount of software to
maintain. At the same time, low specs means they might have no
interest in most packages.
Maybe 15.05 life could be extend with a lower cost by limiting
maintenance to a subset of packages (core? even less?). We could
release LEDE 15.05.(x+1) LTS with feeds configured to use only that
subset of packages. We could also limit the images to those low spec
models.
EOL is not really a big deal until it requires a new HW. Routers are
things that die hard, even after a decade. It just doesn't seem right
to turn old working hw into electronic waste because of software.
Keeping old stuff running is even on of the reasons to use OSS.
Regards,
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