[Cerowrt-devel] Introducing the LEDE project

[Cerowrt-devel] Introducing the LEDE project

[John Crispin]

The LEDE project is founded as a spin-off of the OpenWrt project and
shares many of the same goals. We are building an embedded Linux
distribution that makes it easy for developers, system administrators or
other Linux enthusiasts to build and customize software for embedded
devices, especially wireless routers. The name 'LEDE' stands for 'Linux
Embedded Development Environment'.

Members of the project already include a significant share of the most
active members of the OpenWrt community. We intend to bring new life to
Embedded Linux development by creating a community with a strong focus
on transparency, collaboration and decentralisation.

LEDE’s stated goals are:
- Building a great embedded Linux distribution with focus on stability
and functionality.
- Having regular, predictable release cycles coupled with community
provided device testing feedback.
- Establishing transparent decision processes with broad community
participation and public meetings.

We decided to create this new project because of long standing issues
that we were unable to fix from within the OpenWrt project/community:
1. Number of active core developers at an all time low, no process for
getting more new people involved.
2. Unreliable infrastructure, fixes prevented by internal disagreements
and single points of failure.
3. Lack of communication, transparency and coordination in the OpenWrt
project, both inside the core team and between the core team and the
rest of the community.
4. Not enough people with commit access to handle the incoming flow of
patches, too little attention to testing and regular builds.
5. Lack of focus on stability and documentation.

To address these issues we set up the LEDE project in a different way
compared to OpenWrt:
1. All our communication channels are public, some read-only to
non-members to maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio.
2. Our decision making process is more open, with an approximate 50/50
mix of developers and power users with voting rights.
3. Our infrastructure is simplified a lot, to ensure that it creates
less maintenance work for us.
4. We have made our merge policy more liberal, based on our experience
with the OpenWrt package github feed.
5. We have a strong focus on automated testing combined with a
simplified release process.

We would like to thank the communities using the codebase and would
welcome endorsements. If your community feels that the idea is good and
will benefit all our communities as a whole then please post an
endorsement on the lede-dev mailing list.

Find out more on our project website http://lede-project.org/

Daniel Golle
Felix Fietkau
Hauke Mehrtens
Jo-Philipp Wich
John Crispin
Matthias Schiffer
Steven Barth

Re: [Cerowrt-devel] [gluon] Introducing the LEDE project

[Jochen Demmer]

Hi,

I'm looking forward to this as I your goals sound very appealing. I have 
zero knowledge about what went good and what didn't at/(in the 
background of) the OpenWrt project. But when your implications about the 
past problems are right, than I'm convinced they should be overcome.

What I'm curious about is:
* what tools will be used in order to prevent past obstacles, with 
special regard to communication?
* what methods will you be using to recuit more active members, while I 
believe it should be technically very easy to actively participate. I 
hope there is no exclusive focus on IRC and Mailing lists, as I consider 
both fringe group tools.
* Especially for power users/administrators. Will there be such an 
overwhelming amount of documentation one day? Compatible devices, but 
also operating manual etc.

My only concern is that this split might slow things down. I hope it 
won't.

Jochen Demmer

On 2016-05-03 20:55, John Crispin wrote:
> The LEDE project is founded as a spin-off of the OpenWrt project and
> shares many of the same goals. We are building an embedded Linux
> distribution that makes it easy for developers, system administrators 
> or
> other Linux enthusiasts to build and customize software for embedded
> devices, especially wireless routers. The name 'LEDE' stands for 'Linux
> Embedded Development Environment'.
> 
> Members of the project already include a significant share of the most
> active members of the OpenWrt community. We intend to bring new life to
> Embedded Linux development by creating a community with a strong focus
> on transparency, collaboration and decentralisation.
> 
> LEDE’s stated goals are:
> - Building a great embedded Linux distribution with focus on stability
> and functionality.
> - Having regular, predictable release cycles coupled with community
> provided device testing feedback.
> - Establishing transparent decision processes with broad community
> participation and public meetings.
> 
> We decided to create this new project because of long standing issues
> that we were unable to fix from within the OpenWrt project/community:
> 1. Number of active core developers at an all time low, no process for
> getting more new people involved.
> 2. Unreliable infrastructure, fixes prevented by internal disagreements
> and single points of failure.
> 3. Lack of communication, transparency and coordination in the OpenWrt
> project, both inside the core team and between the core team and the
> rest of the community.
> 4. Not enough people with commit access to handle the incoming flow of
> patches, too little attention to testing and regular builds.
> 5. Lack of focus on stability and documentation.
> 
> To address these issues we set up the LEDE project in a different way
> compared to OpenWrt:
> 1. All our communication channels are public, some read-only to
> non-members to maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio.
> 2. Our decision making process is more open, with an approximate 50/50
> mix of developers and power users with voting rights.
> 3. Our infrastructure is simplified a lot, to ensure that it creates
> less maintenance work for us.
> 4. We have made our merge policy more liberal, based on our experience
> with the OpenWrt package github feed.
> 5. We have a strong focus on automated testing combined with a
> simplified release process.
> 
> We would like to thank the communities using the codebase and would
> welcome endorsements. If your community feels that the idea is good and
> will benefit all our communities as a whole then please post an
> endorsement on the lede-dev mailing list.
> 
> Find out more on our project website http://lede-project.org/
> 
> Daniel Golle
> Felix Fietkau
> Hauke Mehrtens
> Jo-Philipp Wich
> John Crispin
> Matthias Schiffer
> Steven Barth