Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Martyn Welch]

Hi All,

This email is mainly targeted at those who are subscribed to the "openembedded-users" mailing list, who are not also subscribed to the "openembedded-devel" list.

There has been a proposal on the openembedded-devel mailing list to re-organise the lists provided on openembedded.org. The re-organisation has been discussed as part of a larger discussion into the procedures that are used to review patches/changes to Openembedded, that aim to make the process more efficient and transparent.

A proposal has been put forward to merge a number of the mailing lists. There are currently 7 OpenEmbeddded mailing lists with the following purposes:

Openembedded-announce - (no description available)
Openembedded-commits - Commits to the OpenEmbedded metadata repository
Openembedded-devel - Using the OpenEmbedded metadata to build Distributions
Openembedded-issues - OE Issues
Openembedded-stablebranch - Discussion and review of changes to the stable branch and its policy
Openembedded-users - Using OE
Openembedded-private - (no description available)

The role each of these lists is currently poorly defined and in some cases either a list has too few knowledgeable/key subscribers to properly answer the questions asked, have overlapping objectives or would better serve the larger Openembedded community by being merged into a more active list. The proposal is to merge the list to form 3 better defined lists:

Openembedded-devel - for humans to post patches and ask questions
Openembedded-commits - commits, bugs, logs, etc
Openembedded-private - core team

The plan (as I understand it - please correct me if I'm wrong) is to:
* Close OpenEmbedded Announce, It seems to have received no traffic since April 2007.
* Merge OpenEmbedded-issues into Openembedded-commits. This list will be for fairly verbose automated messages and as such high traffic.
* Merge Openembedded-users and Openembedded-stablebranch in to Openembedded-devel. This will form a single list for the discussion of changes and issues regarding the Openembedded platform and to ensure all users and developers are aware of up coming changes and have a chance to be involved in any discussions. It is believed this will also aid with spotting changes that should be ported from the development branch to the stable branch and visa-versa.
* Retain Openembedded-private for private core-team discussions.

Initial support on Openembedded-devel has been very positive, though the views of those subscribed on the Openembedded-users list are also important. Objections, suggestions and support for these plans are welcome.

Martyn

-- 
Martyn Welch MEng MPhil MIET (Principal Software Engineer)   T:+44(0)1327322748
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms Ltd,        |Registered in England and Wales
Tove Valley Business Park, Towcester,      |(3828642) at 100 Barbirolli Square,
Northants, NN12 6PF, UK T:+44(0)1327359444 |Manchester,M2 3AB  VAT:GB 729849476

Re: Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Martyn Welch]

Wolf, Josef wrote:
> Martyn Welch wrote:
> 
> [ ... ]
>> There has been a proposal on the openembedded-devel mailing list
>> to re-organise the lists provided on openembedded.org.
> [ ... ]
>> Openembedded-devel - for humans to post patches and ask questions
>> Openembedded-commits - commits, bugs, logs, etc
>> Openembedded-private - core team
> 
> To be honest, I am somewhat confused by the naming of the lists.
> If I understand correctly, the intent of the new lists are
> 
> OE-private: core-team.
>             All the other projects I know of would call this list
>             FOOBAR-devel
> 
> OE-devel: rest of the world.
>           All the other projects I know of would call this list
>           FOOBAR-users
> 
> Is there any reason for this strange (that is: non-standard) naming
> scheme?  Is OE-private meant to contain really private (confidential?)
> traffic?  If not, I'd guess many people (like me) would mis-interpret
> the intent of this list.

Yes - it is my understanding that the traffic on Openembedded-private is really private (I believe that OpenEmbedded is now legally registered as a non-profit in Germany and I should imagine there are certain discussions which need a degree of privacy).

Openembedded-devel is currently planned to be the list for all technical discussions of the use and development of OE.

Martyn

-- 
Martyn Welch MEng MPhil MIET (Principal Software Engineer)   T:+44(0)1327322748
GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms Ltd,        |Registered in England and Wales
Tove Valley Business Park, Towcester,      |(3828642) at 100 Barbirolli Square,
Northants, NN12 6PF, UK T:+44(0)1327359444 |Manchester,M2 3AB  VAT:GB 729849476

Re: Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Am Mittwoch, den 25.02.2009, 16:08 +0000 schrieb Martyn Welch:
> Wolf, Josef wrote:
> > Martyn Welch wrote:
> > 
> > [ ... ]
> >> There has been a proposal on the openembedded-devel mailing list
> >> to re-organise the lists provided on openembedded.org.
> > [ ... ]
> >> Openembedded-devel - for humans to post patches and ask questions
> >> Openembedded-commits - commits, bugs, logs, etc
> >> Openembedded-private - core team
> > 
> > To be honest, I am somewhat confused by the naming of the lists.
> > If I understand correctly, the intent of the new lists are
> > 
> > OE-private: core-team.
> >             All the other projects I know of would call this list
> >             FOOBAR-devel
> > 
> > OE-devel: rest of the world.
> >           All the other projects I know of would call this list
> >           FOOBAR-users
> > 
> > Is there any reason for this strange (that is: non-standard) naming
> > scheme?  Is OE-private meant to contain really private (confidential?)
> > traffic?  If not, I'd guess many people (like me) would mis-interpret
> > the intent of this list.
> 
> Yes - it is my understanding that the traffic on Openembedded-private is really private (I believe that OpenEmbedded is now legally registered as a non-profit in Germany and I should imagine there are certain discussions which need a degree of privacy).

Correct, although it's not because of the e.V., but rather for companies
who may want to contact us in order to get some work arrangements, but
don't want to be disclosed.

-- 
:M:

Re: Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Philip Balister]

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Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 25.02.2009, 16:08 +0000 schrieb Martyn Welch:
>> Wolf, Josef wrote:
>>> Martyn Welch wrote:
>>>
>>> [ ... ]
>>>> There has been a proposal on the openembedded-devel mailing list
>>>> to re-organise the lists provided on openembedded.org.
>>> [ ... ]
>>>> Openembedded-devel - for humans to post patches and ask questions
>>>> Openembedded-commits - commits, bugs, logs, etc
>>>> Openembedded-private - core team
>>> To be honest, I am somewhat confused by the naming of the lists.
>>> If I understand correctly, the intent of the new lists are
>>>
>>> OE-private: core-team.
>>>             All the other projects I know of would call this list
>>>             FOOBAR-devel
>>>
>>> OE-devel: rest of the world.
>>>           All the other projects I know of would call this list
>>>           FOOBAR-users
>>>
>>> Is there any reason for this strange (that is: non-standard) naming
>>> scheme?  Is OE-private meant to contain really private (confidential?)
>>> traffic?  If not, I'd guess many people (like me) would mis-interpret
>>> the intent of this list.
>> Yes - it is my understanding that the traffic on Openembedded-private is really private (I believe that OpenEmbedded is now legally registered as a non-profit in Germany and I should imagine there are certain discussions which need a degree of privacy).
> 
> Correct, although it's not because of the e.V., but rather for companies
> who may want to contact us in order to get some work arrangements, but
> don't want to be disclosed.

And it is not a very exciting list either. No one is missing anything 
not being on it.

Philip

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Re: Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Marco Cavallini]

Martyn Welch ha scritto:
>> To be honest, I am somewhat confused by the naming of the lists.
>> If I understand correctly, the intent of the new lists are
>>
>> OE-private: core-team.
>>             All the other projects I know of would call this list
>>             FOOBAR-devel
>>
>> OE-devel: rest of the world.
>>           All the other projects I know of would call this list
>>           FOOBAR-users
>>
>> Is there any reason for this strange (that is: non-standard) naming
>> scheme?  Is OE-private meant to contain really private (confidential?)
>> traffic?  If not, I'd guess many people (like me) would mis-interpret
>> the intent of this list.
> 
> Yes - it is my understanding that the traffic on Openembedded-private is
> really private (I believe that OpenEmbedded is now legally registered as
> a non-profit in Germany and I should imagine there are certain
> discussions which need a degree of privacy).

IMHO this behaviour would appear like whether OE was yet another
company/competitor in the embedded market rather than an open source
project, achieving the opposite effect than expected.

/marco

Re: Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Am Donnerstag, den 26.02.2009, 14:22 +0100 schrieb Marco Cavallini:
> Martyn Welch ha scritto:
> >> To be honest, I am somewhat confused by the naming of the lists.
> >> If I understand correctly, the intent of the new lists are
> >>
> >> OE-private: core-team.
> >>             All the other projects I know of would call this list
> >>             FOOBAR-devel
> >>
> >> OE-devel: rest of the world.
> >>           All the other projects I know of would call this list
> >>           FOOBAR-users
> >>
> >> Is there any reason for this strange (that is: non-standard) naming
> >> scheme?  Is OE-private meant to contain really private (confidential?)
> >> traffic?  If not, I'd guess many people (like me) would mis-interpret
> >> the intent of this list.
> > 
> > Yes - it is my understanding that the traffic on Openembedded-private is
> > really private (I believe that OpenEmbedded is now legally registered as
> > a non-profit in Germany and I should imagine there are certain
> > discussions which need a degree of privacy).
> 
> IMHO this behaviour would appear like whether OE was yet another
> company/competitor in the embedded market rather than an open source
> project, achieving the opposite effect than expected.

No.

We explicitly encourage companies to use OE in their projects and
openembedded-private has been established to facilitate that for
companies that do not want to be disclosed -- which is their right and
not to be judged by us.

The outcome of this has shown up in more than just one improvement of
OE. If we close this list, we lose opportunities, it's as simple as
that.

-- 
:M:

Re: Discussion regarding the future of OpenEmbedded mailing lists

[Michael 'Mickey' Lauer]

Ok, since there wasn't any substantial contribution to the actual
proposal, I will implement this within the next 96h:

1.) openembedded-users will be closed, remaining read-only in the
archives.
2.) openembedded-announce will be removed.
3.) openembedded-issues will be removed.
4.) The bug tracker will post to openembedded-commits.

There will be no future notice on this list, please subscribe to
openembedded-devel, if you haven't already.

Cheers,

-- 
:M: