The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 4, 2017 19:27 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566)
In reply to: The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting by jejb
Parent article: The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

My own contribution to Quagga (a 1-character documentation fix) took 8 months to get a response and another 4 to get into a release. I'm not sure if that's representative of how they treat everyone.

I don't buy that excuse for forking though. If they value openness and community involvement, why the hell would they go to the Linux Foundation?

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 5, 2017 1:44 UTC (Wed) by mdolan (subscriber, #104340) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm not sure what your concern is with the LF, but unfortunately your experience in contributing to quagga was very similar to others' or even better than others. What they really needed was an open contribution model that allowed scaling the maintainers and the LF was able to assist with setting up a governance model to help. The community setup the project in less than a fourth of the time it took to get your 1-character documentation patch into a release. At a certain point, forking is what makes FOSS work and there are many options for sharing back up into upstream quagga too.

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 5, 2017 7:11 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

What rubbish.

It's taken ye since last July to do this fork. It's been 9_ months. Ye wheedled the contact details for my manager, from a colleague of mine who happened to go a Quagga meeting at IETF last July. Then ye _PHONED MY DAMN MANAGER_. Just out of the goodness of your hearts, of course, so HPE could do their "planning".

Under whom did Quagga patch integration shrivel up? It was under _NetDEF_ - or whatever company it is that that is a front for.

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 5, 2017 7:18 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

(deliberate use of the plural "you" there; plus, it's still regularly used and perfectly idiomatic in the dialect of English that I speak).

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 7, 2017 16:02 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

To avoid any misunderstanding, my employer has no interest in any of this.

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 5, 2017 6:10 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (2 responses)

When was that?

A huge backlog of stuff built while NetDEF effectively had the reins of Quagga. Which I believe was not entirely by accident.

There has been a high degree of politics at play here.

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 5, 2017 21:56 UTC (Wed) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

If my mail client's dates are accurate, this was 6-7 years ago now. I was pretty surprised when the response came back.

The Linux Foundation picks up FRRouting

Posted Apr 6, 2017 4:03 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

Well, you either have an ru., ch., or org. email address then I guess.

I was mostly away then. I was busy with academic stuff from about '09 to late '14. During that period some others did most of the maintenance. The period you mention I think the primary maintainer wasn't being paid, he was over-worked, and he unfortunately didn't try to involve others (which may have been down to there not really being others to help with maintenance).

From about '12 on to late '14 someone else was primary maintainer. They were paid, through an ISC project initially, called "OpenSourceRouting". ISC had some internal issues, which led to them refocusing on core stuff. That maintainer and another ISCer, with some others, setup a non-profit tax-exempt corporate - "NetDEF" - to take over that ISC routing project in late '13.

Unfortunately, they chose to take a strategy of using control over commit access to 'encourage' corporate sponsors to sponsor them. They were also less than open to others about the fact they had some kind of commercial contracting business on the side - and the public record (the email list) is clear that they would try push such work into Quagga, even while there was a backlog of regular contributions.

I was finishing up my academic stuff in '14-'15, and contracted with them from late Sept. '14 to begin May '15. I left them because of differences on the above. From about Sept. '15 onward patch integration greatly increased. The backlog of patches was dealt with by about summer '16. Patches, whether submitted by email or bugzilla, are dealt with promptly - either integrated or returned with queries or comments.

When NetDEF lost their maintainers, they - as per other long comment - agitated for a fork behind the scenes, since about May '15. Assisted by Cumulus, who have their own agenda. They've got their fork. Now they're spreading somewhat alternative facts about what happened.

The facts are there though, in the commit history and the email lists.