Improving OpenWrt internal communication

[Hauke Mehrtens]

On 5/30/25 14:42, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Like described in the failed vote about 2 months ago [0], [1] we have 
> some communication problems in the OpenWrt project.
> 
> In the previous vote mail I did not provide detailed examples to protect 
> other parties, but I do not see that the situation improved.
> 
> Here are some examples from the last 3 months of not so good 
> communication I am aware of, maybe there is more communication going on 
> which I am not aware of. I would like to find a way how we can improve 
> this in the future.
> 
> Problem examples:
> For example there was an exchange about OpenWrt involvement in ETSI 
> activities related to the CRA between SFC, FSFE and OpenWrt, as far as I 
> understood. I was only getting aware of this some months later in 
> private after I posted something on the public mailing list about this 
> topic, see [2].
> For such activities it would be nice if all OpenWrt project members are 
> getting informed. I wrote the mail to the public list only because Ilu 
> contacted me and I exchanged some mails with here about this topic.
> 
> There is an unofficial OpenWrt meetup at the WCW in Berlin this weekend 
> [3]. I do not know who exactly was invited, all communication with me 
> happened in 1:1 chats in Signal.
> 
> Regarding the OpenWrt two development I only got some rumors that it is 
> hitting some challenges with some vendors and it is not clear if it will 
> finish, but I do not have much more information that the vote. These 
> information were only shared orally with me and are maybe also wrong or 
> outdated.
> 
> I was contacted by someone from Capgemini who is doing a study for the 
> European Commission about Radio Equipment Directive (RED) for an 
> interview to provide OpenWrt's perspective about this. I shared the 
> request with some people in a private mail. The person also contacted 
> contact at openwrt.org 6 times, but nobody noticed.
> 
> We also had some discussions some years ago when we were unhappy with 
> SFC actions or none actions. This was only discussed in private.
> 
> 
> Proposal:
> I would like to have a private mailing list which all OpenWrt committers 
> can read and write to, but which is not public readable. Maybe we can 
> make it public writable, that would make it easy to ad the mailing list 
> into CC when communicating with other parties.
> 
> I think just saying we will improve and move all communication onto the 
> public openwrt-adm mailing list will not work. I see that I and also 
> some other people, are sometimes doing bilateral communication to 
> prepare writing something to openwrt-adm, seeing it more as an 
> announcement channel. I intentionally did not mention any people in the 
> examples in this mail, on a private mailing list I would probably have 
> done it.
> 
> 
> Other remarks:
> I think it is now even worse than the time when the LEDE fork was done, 
> but maybe I only have some part of the information from that time. I 
> like that the votes and release planning is done in public and not on 
> openwrt-hackers, the old private mailing list, but some communication 
> also moved to 1:1 communication which is even worse from my point of view.
> 
> We have already private mailing list or will have soon for some groups 
> like infrastructure and buildbot management. These mailing list are 
> probably helpful.
> 
> I would keep the handling of conatct at openwrt.org out of this discussion 
> for now. I still think it is not working, we miss too many mails send to 
> contact at openwrt.org, maybe we should just remove the links from the 
> website.
> 
> What are your opinions on this topic?
> Does someone have a better idea that a mailing list only OpenWrt 
> committers can read, but everyone can write to?
> 
> 
> Hauke
> 
> 
> [0]: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-adm/2025-April/002672.html
> [1]: https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-04-04-private-mailing-list
> [2]: https://lists.openwrt.org/pipermail/openwrt-devel/2025- 
> April/043899.html
> [3]: https://wiki.freifunk.net/Wireless_Community_Weekend_2025:Participants
> 
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> openwrt-adm at lists.openwrt.org
> https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-adm

Hi,

We talked about this topic at the unofficial OpenWrt meetup at the WCW 
in Berlin about 6 weeks ago. Multiple people said that they would not 
vote for a private mailing list because of problems which resulted in 
the LEDE split up.

We have a Signal group now, if you want to join, please send me your 
phone number and I will add you to the Signal group.

I also added a note to the 3 pages in the wiki with the contact address 
this:
 > The contact at openwrt.org mail box is not well monitored, probably we
 > will not notice when you send a mail to this mail address. In case you
 > do not get an answer or it is important please use our public mailing
 > list openwrt-adm at lists.openwrt.org.

I will not follow up on this topic any more. I want to reduce my 
involvement in administrative stuff related to OpenWrt. I just want to 
make sure no one is waiting for me to do anything on this topic.

I would still prefer a private mailing list over a Signal group. If 
someone else wants to work on this topic please go for it. Maybe just 
set such a list up and announce it without a vote.

Hauke