[Battlemesh] WBMv8 -- a personal perspective

[Sven Eckelmann]

On Monday 10 August 2015 14:13:24 nemesis wrote:
>  I would also encourage more participation of ALL the routing protocol 
>  developers, because in my opinion the batman-adv team did not follow the 
>  process as much as the other routing protocol developers.

Can you please tell us more about that? We've debugged different problems for
the wibed team (it seems to be that some people more or less seriously like 
blame batman-adv for everything), provided workarounds or suggestion what we 
think should be be changed in OpenWrt to fix crashes/problems in other 
components. At some point the wibed team seemed to have a basic firmware with 
batman-adv already running. Maybe I remember this wrong but at least I was 
always under the impression that batman-adv was already there and configured 
and changes should only be provided by the routing daemon developers. After 
that point I was only asked by Pedro about the current version of batman-adv 
in the Chaos Calmer openwrt-routing feed. This was followed by a discussion of 
Marek and Igor about whether the firmware team should switch to Chaos Calmer 
for WiBed or stay at the current version (which I assumed was "mostly" 
working).

The only thing I heard after that point were some rumors about some "batman-
adv people" which were allegedly started by Juliusz [1], the existence of a 
second firmware team (which already seemed to have stuff running - which meant 
for me that I also already have batman-adv working) and then some people 
running around making fun about batman-adv because it allegedly duplicates 
packets. I've tried to debug the latter one in a smaller setup because the 
other things which I overheard didn't seem relevant for the actual tests. The 
7 WDR4300 I brought with me were already used in a different testbed. But 
Krishna was kind enough to help out with his nodes and tested some minor 
things with me and at least partially succeeded. The problem with the wifi 
driver was reported to OpenWrt, a working version was of the wifi driver was 
identified and everything was explained to persons who I've recognized as 
relevant for the ongoing tests (Amadeus, Henning, ...). Of course, this was 
already quite late and resulted only in smaller discussions about what we 
should do differently about the firmware stuff in the next battlemesh and no 
change in the "new test firmware".

During that time or after that I was not approached anymore by anyone about 
configuration stuff or heard anyone requiring help with batman-adv for the 
battlemesh test. Maybe you've talked about it with Antonio (at least I was 
near you while you've talked very intensely with him in italian) but I have a 
big flaw - I don't speak italian at all.

Sorry for not being the most social person. I don't talk much and try not to 
disturb person when they are already occupied. But this doesn't mean that I am 
not listening or that I don't try to help. This was only my second battlemesh 
and also the first one after a two year pause from batman-adv and battlemesh. 
So I didn't want to join any team before the battlemesh started because I 
considered myself more a burden to any team which already knew what was done 
the last years. I was still trying to help ad hoc when required and without 
hindering someone.

Even when still thought and talked positive about the event with txt.file and 
Amadeus - no, I don't think so anymore after reading these mails. If it is 
required to create a second team which doesn't want to cooperate with us (or 
at least not with me) - ok. But then reading this is more than depressing.

I said that I would attend the next battlemesh and most likely a meeting in 
Sarantaporo. But I've now decided not to do it anymore (at least not during 
such an event). I met many very kind and intelligent people. But this doesn't 
help when at the end I am under the impression of being expelled and feeling 
bad about having attended the battlemesh in the first place.


Some positive words at the end:

Thanks to the local orga team, the external orga team, the firmware and 
testing team(s), the people giving talks (sorry for missing most of them while 
debugging stuff - but I will try to watch the recordings later), promoters, 
... and of course anyone else who joined the battlemesh v8.

Kind regards,
	Sven

[1] I was not there at the time... just heard from other persons; so this can
    be also counted as pure rumor spread by me. Please don't use this against
    Juliusz in any way because he may never have said something like that in
    the first place. Still the rumors (whoever really started them) came to my
    ears
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