Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoechst | Hacker News Reader

The forked from OpenWRT in May 2016 and are now already going back. I guess there's not much to gain from the code merge for end users except for a few bug fixes (https://lede-project.org/faq#were_there_any_technical_reason...).

View on HN

Well, technically you might be right, but I would like to point out that two groups joining their efforts, while picking the best of both (organizational) worlds (processes, infrastructure, etc.) is always a good thing in the open-source world and means progress could be accelerated for the new, unified project.

Politically this could mean that either OpenWRT has moved and intends to improve regarding the issues that lead to the fork, or that the fork wants to return home either way.

I suppose at least both groups think their time is better spent together instead of separate, and I personally like these news way more than those of yet another fork...

Sure, don't get me wrong, I think it's great that they put aside their differences and decided to work together again. I agree that focusing of one project is better.

Just wanted to put it more into context.

Yes. It's so rare to find people willing to cooperate and make some compromises for much larger overarching productivity. The BFG and Pylons merged to become Pyramid after recognizing that they were working toward a very similar vision and that it was just wasted effort to be getting there separately. It's always great to hear of this kind of thing, and I have huge respect for the people behind the few projects that are willing to do it.

From what I've gathered so far, LEDE is where the vast majority of activity and development moved after OpenWRT alienated most of the participants with friction in their workflow. OpenWRT had just a shell of 3 project members left, but continued to have substantial name recognition.

Sounds reminiscent of the nodejs/iojs split and re-merge.

This is correct. LEDE is where all the devs and action went. OpenWRT is now just two or three people who were holding the old project hostage and may agree for LEDE to take over the name.

If there is a re-merge, it's going to be the LEDE base that is used. There are a half-dozen or more new devices supported in LEDE, an no new devices in OpenWRT from after the split (that I am aware of anyway).

Avoiding an ongoing fork shows a great deal of maturity. Way better than merging a fork that's 5 years out.

If you look at the pace and scope of commits on the LEDE codebase, it's dramatically increased from OpenWRT. It's far more than "a few bug fixes", they've substantially rewritten the codebase and updated its dependencies. Meanwhile the OpenWRT codebase has been stagnant (since most developers went to LEDE where their commits could actually make it in). The merge replaces the OpenWRT organization infra with LEDE's, allowing LEDE's pace of innovation to continue. That's the main gain.

As far as development resources were concerned, LEDE was OpenWRT. There is no noticeable difference in development activity before/after the fork when looking at git commits:

https://github.com/lede-project/source/graphs/code-frequency

OpenWRT's repository had minor bug fixes in comparison.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com