[Battlemesh] [OpenWrt-Devel] Request for Feedback - prplwrt Software Support Program - initial draft

[Philipp Borgers]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 05:10:59PM +0100, Simon Wunderlich wrote:
> Hey Saverio,
> 
> On Wednesday 09 March 2016 09:58:57 Saverio Proto wrote:
> > > I don't have a number off hand, that's still being decided. My feeling has
> > > been that's it'd be in the tens of thousands USD total. I'll try to get
> > > more of finalized amount as soon as possible.
> > 
> > Hello Eric,
> > 
> > considering that a Senior Engineer in the SF Bay Area has an average
> > income of 120.000 USD per year... a contribution on terms of tens of
> > thousands dollars does not cover even the work of one person for one
> > year. Should we for this little money involve an american foundation
> > in the decisional processes ?
> 
> who says that we have to involve them into a decisional process? All they do 
> is offer money for some projects in which industry partners are interested in 
> as well. Of course, bringing the contributions back to upstream should be made 
> a requirement, but I don't really see anything bad in this.

In general the decision making process should be as open as possible for
everybody who wants to participate and contribute in a positive way.

> If this model is succesful, maybe more funding will be made available.
> 
> For example, I remember talking to various companies back when I started DFS 
> development, and they told me "hey our company would like to sponsor this as 
> well since we will need it too". Pretty much everyone using Open Source 
> drivers in 5 GHz needed that. I'm sure there are more features like this where 
> industry has lots of interest, and having a platform specifically for OpenWRT 
> (and surrounding ecosystem) which contributes to both industry and community 
> is a good thing, no? At least I didn't want to shoot a fancy kickstarter video 
> and go through all the pain, and luckily I found a sponsor for the initial 
> development eventually ... :)

Take the (wireless) community networks they have strong interests in OpenWrt
related projects too. Some of them would benefit from an open funding model.

I would love to see funding with as few strings attached as possible, e.g. no
fancy videos you have to post to youtube ;) Maybe we can come up with an
incremental funding concept that creates trust between all parties on the way.

> > My feeling is that prpl is an American foundation that is throwing
> > penauts to a successfull open source project to have development at
> > low cost.
> > A company that hires a team of developer for a Carrier Grade OpenWrt
> > spends more than 100.000 USD per year in development cost.
> > 
> > You are right, there is a conflict between the community and prpl, so
> > you have to convince us better :)
> 
> if I remember correctly there was quite some interest on GSoC all over the 
> communities as well, where many people worked on various things for 5k per 
> student. One of the restrictions there was the limited time/money available, 
> which kept some interesting ideas out and focused on students with less 
> experience, but in general I think its a good program (especially the 
> requirement to give back the results).

GSoC works well form some interest, projects, people. In the end it has a lot of
limitations and strings attached that hinder development in other areas. I think
it's a good supplement to other funding concepts.

> I don't see this too politically (yes, I'd like better industry involvement 
> too), but I think this would be a great platform to propose some nice ideas 
> like WiFi developments and get funded on them. For example, some projects 
> ideas which come to my mind are:
> 
>  * DFS for ad-hoc/mesh networks
>  * WiFi spectral scan improvements
>  * fair queueing in WiFi
>  * TPC integration
>  * Find a proper solution for the FCC problem

May I add "ipv6 prefix delegation in multi-homed layer 3 mesh networks" and an
open standard for TDMA?

Maybe it's also a start to coordinate work on these topics a little bit better
e.g. through someone who works full time (at prpl?).

> Some of them are already beeing worked on and are already funded, some are 
> not, so whats wrong in getting them funded (or getting more ppl to work on 
> them) through this channel? I don't see the harm. :)

Me too!

But I would like to see a more distributed funding model based on the different
members of the community developed too.

> Cheers,
>      Simon

Best Philipp

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