Voting 2025-04-04 - Create private mailing list for OpenWrt committers

Started by: Hauke

Status: Closed

Result: Failed

Ended: 29/04/2025

I propose creating a new mailing list that only OpenWrt committers can read. All OpenWrt committers should be subscribed by default, and it should be possible to send messages to the list without requiring a subscription. Additionally, this list should replace the current abuse@openwrt.org and contact@openwrt.org addresses handling with freescout.openwrt.org.

This would be similar to the old openwrt-hackers@lists.openwrt.org

Please vote Yes or +1 if you support the creation of this list.

I will conclude the vote on 26th April 2025.

Rationale:

Currently, some of the project's internal communication happens through direct emails, Signal, or small private groups. While some discussions should remain private, they shouldn’t be limited to a highly selective subset of individuals. A dedicated internal mailing list would provide a structured way to handle sensitive topics without resorting to fragmented, ad-hoc communication.

Public discussions and voting should still take place on openwrt-adm, and key management topics (e.g., release planning) should remain there. However, we may also want to consider merging openwrt-adm and openwrt-devel to streamline communication, but the merger is out of scope of this vote.

From an operational standpoint, responding to external inquiries is often challenging. I hesitate to CC a public mailing list without explicit permission, but I’d have no issue including a private list. This would improve transparency while maintaining appropriate confidentiality.

Additionally, organizing OpenWrt meetings via direct emails to ~40 committers is inefficient and prone to missing recipients. A dedicated mailing list would simplify coordination.

Finally, freescout.openwrt.org was broken for about six months, causing all incoming emails from this period to be lost. While it is now functional, it appears nobody is reading the mails. A dedicated private list would provide a more reliable channel for handling such inquiries. We are getting more than one spam mail per day on freescout, the spam filter on the mailling list is working much better.