Re: [lime-dev] LibreMesh 2020.1 and this mailing list

On 12/16/20 9:16 AM, Eric Anderson wrote: No answer from the devs, so I'll try to answer: This mailing list is still the official channel for development discussion but actual decision have not often (never?) been taken here. Some of the decisions have been taken in Github issues, which in my opinion is ok, as it's easy to "watch" the relevant repositories, get the notifications and participate. Regarding where the other decisions were are being discussed, over the years there have been various private channels for development discussions (on Telegram [1], on Mattermost [2]). Nowadays these channels are silent (no idea if there are others). For example, some recent decision on the project's priorities (as the BMX6 => Babeld migration decided around February 2019 [3], or the huge effort for replacing LuCI by lime-app started around April 2017) have not been taken neither on this list, neither on lime-users list, nor on Telegram, or Mattermost, nor on the IRC/Element chatroom (at least not in any channel I am present). I don't want to say that those were bad choices, on the contrary, the result of lime-app is really really impressive and the latest 2020.1 release works smoothly with Babeld! :) Said so, I have no idea where the development discussions are currently happening. The appearance of the LibreRouter project [4] from Altermundi [5] with the related funding and grants, and the development of LibreRouterOS [6] (a distribution of LibreMesh, which means that it selects some packages directly from the LibreMesh repositories. You can get its binary releases here [7] and follow its updates here [8]) partially took over the LibreMesh project agenda [9]. So, maybe now the decisions are taken on some LibreRouter-related or Altermundi-related channel? From the LibreMesh website, the statement in favour of public communications have been removed as "misinformation" [10]. This lack of transparency in the communications brings us to what, in my opinion, is the main problem of the project: the lack of transparency in the governance model [11]. We often saw "Do-ocracy" mechanisms and open discussions, with the involvement of active members from the community (and moderated by a list of Github users, some of whom are visible here [12]). But some other times, looks like a closed collective is taking the decisions. Both governance models (do-ocracy or self-appointing council) would be ok (with one detail: if a closed collective decides something big like the BMX6 => Babeld migration, this should be announced publicly). The problem (for me) is the lack of transparency which can frustrate even the most motivated of the new contributors. This situation can be thought, exaggerating a lot, as an early stage of the LEDE/OpenWrt controversy [13]. Being LibreMesh a modular and open firmware, a strong community could in principle support an alternative set of choices, but this is not easy. The IRC channel is bridged to Element (previously known as Riot), which is more convenient as it caches the messages. See instructions and addresses on the communication page [14] on the website. Ciao && hugs! Ilario [1]: https://lists.libremesh.org/pipermail/lime-users/2018-February/001102.html [2]: https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/pull/412 https://github.com/libremesh/lime-web/issues/73 [3]: https://github.com/libremesh/lime-web/commit/6c1456355a78f54a0bac1171a73edc… https://gitlab.com/librerouter/librerouteros/-/commit/3fc8702dffa7da4626874… [4]: https://librerouter.org [5]: https://altermundi.net/2016/07/10/el-proyecto-librerouter-premios-frida/ [6]: https://gitlab.com/librerouter/librerouteros [7]: https://downloads.libremesh.org/librerouter/openwrt/ https://repo.librerouter.org/lros/releases/ [8]: https://foro.librerouter.org/ [9]: https://github.com/libremesh/lime-packages/search?q=librerouter&type=is… [10]: https://github.com/libremesh/lime-web/commit/af441b6393d79674fd537d97350bea… [11]: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/understanding-open-source-governance-models [12]: https://github.com/orgs/libremesh/people [13]: https://openwrt.org/about#a_reboot_of_the_openwrt_community [14]: https://libremesh.org/communication.html -- Ilario iochesonome(a)gmail.com ilario(a)sindominio.net