I'm just quoting an (anonymized) excrept from an IRC conversation I had:
==== 19:42 < fooo> Does anyone know Max who is the main contributor to OP25 project? We're trying to run OP25 on XTRX and with many forks it's a bit difficult to understand what works and what doesn't (not to mention the setup is completely non-trivial by itself) 19:45 < Baaaaaaar> i guess.. no one? wasn't that abandoned years ago? 19:46 < baaaaaz> just receiving? maybe it's easier to get it working with rtl-sdr first and then work from there 19:50 < fooo> Not really abandoned - last commit Apr 27, 2018 19:50 < fooo> "max" branch 19:50 < fooo> There are also several forks which were never merged... 19:51 < fooo> baaaaaz, It doesn't really matter rtl-sdr vs XTRX since it's GnuRadio. It's that most how-tos are completely outdated and are not compatible with the modern GNURadio... 19:52 < fooo> Ideally we'd like Tx too - I saw someone on YouTube showing Tx and OP25 has a repeater mode. But yes. at least Rx would be nice 19:53 < baaaaaz> I see 19:54 <@LaF0rge> fooo: just contact their mailing list? 19:54 <@LaF0rge> Baaaaaaar: it's less abandoned than DECT or TETRA 19:55 <@LaF0rge> fooo: op25-dev@yahoogroups.com 19:55 < fooo> LaF0rge, Ok, thanks. 19:56 < fooo> Just curios - does he has any page/blog/LinkedIn? I don't think I've ever seen him at OsmoDevCons? 19:57 <@LaF0rge> fooo: none of the OP25 guys has ever showed up in person at any event. I guess they were originally from AU, so quite a bit far? 19:57 < fooo> AU = Australia? 19:57 <@LaF0rge> fooo: yes 19:58 < fooo> I see 19:58 < fooo> Looking at the commit history it's pretty much only Max who is contributing 19:59 <@LaF0rge> but maybe I remember wrongly. In any case, you won't find any APCO25 in Europe [not that I know of] so the "classic Osmocom people" have limited use for playing with it 20:17 < fooo> Btw, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/search?query=op25 returns empty result 20:25 < Baaaaaaar> like i said... dead 20:29 < fooo> I don't think the project is dead, they just don't know/want to run it as a real community project... 20:29 < fooo> I mean they probably just care about scratching their own itch. Which is not bad, it's just not community 20:30 <@LaF0rge> the op25-dev mailing list is active. I'm following it. Many posts in april, few in may 20:31 <@LaF0rge> op25-dev-subscribe@yahoogroups.com should work 20:33 <@LaF0rge> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/op25-dev ====
All the above are long-term Osmocom developers. So as you can see, it's easy to jump to wrong conclusions, if most development happens out of master, and if the yahoo group is restricted/hidden and not publicly archived :)
I'm not saying the fault is with OP25. If people want to jump to quick conclusions without informing themselves properly, they have no right to complain.
And of course it's the OP25 developers decision how to run their project and their communications mechanisms, but I couldn't help but wonder and raise the questions below:
Is there any specific reason that the op25-dev yahoo group is * restricted (i.e. no public archive) * not listed in the yahoo group index (makes it hard to find)
I would argue that it's a FOSS project, and information related to it should be public rather than hidden.
I also have an archive of op25-dev at least from March 2012 onwards that I'd be willing to share. We could import it into the lists.osmocom.org mailman so would have a web-accessible archive that can be indexed by search machines, etc.
You could of course also migrate to a list on lists.osmocom.org, but that is of course a separate question, and always causing lots of fall-out, with everyone having to update their filter rules, aliases, etc. - so maybe not such a good idea.
Let me know what you think about any of the suggestions above. Do with them what you like, it's just a friendly comment from your friends involved in other Osmocom projects...
And btw: If anyone ever wants to show up for OsmoDevCon, please do reach out, we'd be more than happy to learn about OP25 and the people behind it!
Regards, Harald
Hello Harald, and also hello to all the semi-anonymous persons in the IRC!
The op25-dev yahoo group was set up long ago, prior to my involvement with the OP25 project. As to the question about why it's marked "private" my own opinion is that "Y!" makes that the default (and that's due primarily to "Y!" business model considerations) and makes it non-obvious how to change the default.
I would be very open to moving the primary discussion group to an osmocom-hosted resource. There is no reason to have it hosted at its current site and the are certainly no reason(s) that I know of to keep it "private". I have always hesitated to ask you and Holger for anything because of my feeling that you guys already do a lot for us and even so on a 100% volunteer basis. Nonetheless I would be in favor of moving the primary ML up to lists.osmocom.org going forward. However I would also like to hear from others on this in case there are reason(s) I'm not aware of that this would be a bad idea. It is a kind offer and I know we are not the only users currently hosted on "Y!" who are looking to jump to greener pastures. On that issue the timing could not be better.
As far as the questions about the current architecture of OP25 there is more that I can cover in this brief note. When the mainline gnu radio project deprecated support for wx-gui that was an almost-fatal blow to the project. The GRC interface had never been a good fit for our needs and we had evolved a wx-gui implementation of a trunked P25 receiver (which blows the drawers off any current scanner on P25 simulcast trunking). The removal of wx-gui caused a mental note to be made, not to depend too closely on gnu radio features, since they have a regular habit of disappearing. Accordingly the direction has been toward running the receiver UI in a web browser, with plotting functions handled using gnuplot to generate PNG files for near real time display in the browser. This interface (i.e., the HTTP interface) has matured nicely.
As for the other questions, I am in the USA and hate long trips. If there is a conference in the New York area I'd be most interested. OP25 also has xMBE voice synthesis and transmit support for d-star, yaesu fusion (both half rate and full rate), two-slot DMR BS as well as P25 FDMA. I would be most happy to answer any and all questions about OP25 and would be grateful to have access to the forum(s) where these questions can be discussed more fully.
Max KA1RBI
G'day Harald and Max,
There are some very good points in Haralds email and IRC excerpt. There's a few things that we can very easily change and some others that might take a bit more effort or need some help from others. Please feel free to chime in and correct me or add comments. Some of the points I make are just me rambling about the project in general and might not be relevant to Harald / Holger etc, so if this is the case, please feel free to ignore me :)
* Originally, the list was set to private when Stevie created the mailing group back in early 2008. While I'm not sure the exact reasons were for this at the time, but I think may have been done to keep the "signal-to-noise" ratio of the list nice and high. Of course this made the list harder to find and join, which I think has turned people away, as the group was hidden and they couldn't see messages without having to join up - when they were only wanting to browse for find more information on the project to see what it can do. With this in mind, I have changed the groups settings so that it will appear in search results from now on. Unfortunately we can't make the group public due to a restriction from Yahoo that says "Restricted and Private groups cannot be made Public later".
Since Yahoo is now holding us back from being properly "open" with the mailing lists, I too am in favour of a migration to an lists.osmocom.org mailing list. If there is any way we can migrate the entire message history from Yahoo into an osmocom list, that would be great too, but of course it's not totally necessary.
* Installation difficulties - originally, when GNUradio and OP25 were undergoing rapid development, there were a lot of pre-requisites required, and the build process wasn't very smooth. This has all been fixed for a number of years now, and Max has fully scripted the installation so if you are using a supported linux distro (Ubuntu, Raspbian etc) then installing and building OP25 is as simple as running ./install.sh. Sadly as they say, "mud sticks" and the impression is that it's still hard to build, even though it's not the case. Of course many of the "how to' articles on the net are out of date now - perhaps some up to date articles or maybe youtube videos might help with this.
* Various forks (boatbod, Balint etc) and most development happening in "Max" branch - This is a problem that we have spoken about previously and didn't find a solution for. Ideally, I think that new features and code should end up in the mater branch on the osmocom git repo. This way, it's in a single place, it's obvious what it's there for (master being the main central repo) and there's no confusion. I think we would need two things - away we can add developers ssh keys to the osmocom git repo, and also a way to have a pull request type feature where other developers can submit their code, and have say, Max, or someone look at the changes and them merge them in. The main reason that development has ended up in the Max branch is because Max does nearly all of the development work, and any changes that others have made that are suitable, have been merged in manually by Max.
The Balint and Graham (boatbod) forks in particular havesome features that would be nice to have in master. The other thing to keep in mind is that since Max has done most of the development work, we need to be able to ensure that all the coding styles and overall architecture of the codebase are consistent with what Max has intended.
* Lastly - are there any IRC channels that we could contribute to? Or any other forums for this type of thing that might help us communicate the project status better? It sounds like this is really where we're falling down, as I know for a fact that the features and abilities of OP25 are some of the best available - for example the QPSK receiver works just as well as a commercial P25 radio, and it absolutely kills any commercial P25 scanner. I certainly want to make sure that the project is as "open" as possible, and if experienced developers / SDR users, such as the Osmocom guys feel the project is dead, then it means we have some work to do in communicating things a bit better. As Stevie originally intended, the "O" in OP25 is for free and open...
Oh, also, yes the OP25 core contributors are spread out all around the globe - unfortunately getting to Europe is a little tricky!
Cheers, Matt
On 8 May 2018 at 06:14, ikj1234i@yahoo.com [op25-dev] < op25-dev@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Hello Harald, and also hello to all the semi-anonymous persons in the IRC!
The op25-dev yahoo group was set up long ago, prior to my involvement with the OP25 project. As to the question about why it's marked "private" my own opinion is that "Y!" makes that the default (and that's due primarily to "Y!" business model considerations) and makes it non-obvious how to change the default.
I would be very open to moving the primary discussion group to an osmocom-hosted resource. There is no reason to have it hosted at its current site and the are certainly no reason(s) that I know of to keep it "private". I have always hesitated to ask you and Holger for anything because of my feeling that you guys already do a lot for us and even so on a 100% volunteer basis. Nonetheless I would be in favor of moving the primary ML up to lists.osmocom.org going forward. However I would also like to hear from others on this in case there are reason(s) I'm not aware of that this would be a bad idea. It is a kind offer and I know we are not the only users currently hosted on "Y!" who are looking to jump to greener pastures. On that issue the timing could not be better.
As far as the questions about the current architecture of OP25 there is more that I can cover in this brief note. When the mainline gnu radio project deprecated support for wx-gui that was an almost-fatal blow to the project. The GRC interface had never been a good fit for our needs and we had evolved a wx-gui implementation of a trunked P25 receiver (which blows the drawers off any current scanner on P25 simulcast trunking). The removal of wx-gui caused a mental note to be made, not to depend too closely on gnu radio features, since they have a regular habit of disappearing. Accordingly the direction has been toward running the receiver UI in a web browser, with plotting functions handled using gnuplot to generate PNG files for near real time display in the browser. This interface (i.e., the HTTP interface) has matured nicely.
As for the other questions, I am in the USA and hate long trips. If there is a conference in the New York area I'd be most interested. OP25 also has xMBE voice synthesis and transmit support for d-star, yaesu fusion (both half rate and full rate), two-slot DMR BS as well as P25 FDMA. I would be most happy to answer any and all questions about OP25 and would be grateful to have access to the forum(s) where these questions can be discussed more fully.
Max KA1RBI
Hi Matt,
On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 10:25:54AM +1000, Matt Ames matt.ames7bc@gmail.com [op25-dev] wrote:
Since Yahoo is now holding us back from being properly "open" with the mailing lists, I too am in favour of a migration to an lists.osmocom.org mailing list.
Seems like you indeed have a very good reason to migrate away.
If there is any way we can migrate the entire message history from Yahoo into an osmocom list, that would be great too, but of course it's not totally necessary.
The history 2012 through present (while I've been subscribed) is already imported: http://lists.osmocom.org/pipermail/op25-dev/
Admittedly, the pipermail web interface is pretty abysimal, but once we update to mailman3, we will get hyperkitty and a much nicer user interface, also for the old archives.
If anyone has mbox/maildir format archives from 2008 to 2012, I'm happy to import them into this archive, too. Feel free contact me off-list about this.
"Max" branch - This is a problem that we have spoken about previously and didn't find a solution for. Ideally, I think that new features and code should end up in the mater branch on the osmocom git repo. This way, it's in a single place, it's obvious what it's there for (master being the main central repo) and there's no confusion. I think we would need two things - away we can add developers ssh keys to the osmocom git repo, and also a way to have a pull request type feature where other developers can submit their code, and have say, Max, or someone look at the changes and them merge them in.
This is what we use gerrit for in other osmocom projects, see https://gerrit.osmocom.org/
gerrit was (I believe) originally developed by the Google Android folks for code review / merging in their Android OS development universe, but has meanwhile been used by many other projects. For example, Wireshark is also using it, see code.wireshark.org.
In order to use gerrit, we have to change the configuration of your git.osmocom.org repository, so that: * [only] gerrit will push to git.osmocom.org * all developers need to push their changes to gerrit.osmocom.org, the setup is described at http://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki/Gerrit
The nice part about gerrit is that it will manage * subsequent updates / versions of patch sets * structured way for anyone to comment on changes and provide feedback * maintaners have the magic "+2" permission that makes a change eligible for merge * integration with build-testing / continuous integration (https://jenkins.osmocom.org/) to make sure only patches that build will be merged.
Literally anyone in the general public can register an account on gerrit.osmocom.org and start to push changes to gerrit, so there's no "manual adding SSH keys" or "manual creation of accounts" required. Still, the setup with the Change-ID pre-commit hook (see the page above) is something that must be done once by every contributor.
If you don't like gerrit, we can also think of alternatives. If you want to go for github, you can also do that, we'd then simply set up git.osmocom.org to mirror the github repo. I personally have a certain dislike/distrust against proprietary software-as-a-service operators, and prefer to be self-hosting. But then, my choice shouldn't restrict what you guys in OP25 would want to do
- Lastly - are there any IRC channels that we could contribute to?
A number of people from the other osmocom sister projects hang out on #osmocom on freenode.net.
Or any other forums for this type of thing that might help us communicate the project status better? It sounds like this is really where we're falling down, as I know for a fact that the features and abilities of OP25 are some of the best available - for example the QPSK receiver works just as well as a commercial P25 radio, and it absolutely kills any commercial P25 scanner.
From my experience, conference talks/slides/videos also help a lot in
spreading knowledge. So it may make sense to present about your work at some conference where it's on-topic, like OsmoDevCon, grcon, or any HAM radio related event?
Keeping the wiki updated is also important. The public mailing list also will help people to see that there's activity going on. You could blog about your progress (We can aggregate that on planet.osmocom.org). You could use the "News" feature of the redmine project to post updates, too.
Oh, also, yes the OP25 core contributors are spread out all around the globe - unfortunately getting to Europe is a little tricky!
Sure, I know we're not the center of the world, even though many maps are drawn that way ;)
Hi Harald
I will digest and respond more fully to all messages (received several today), but I wanted to shout out one thing now, in response to this comment that you made:
I think the only one really fluent in that kind of topic would be tnt/sylvain.
Sylvain is one of the folks to whom we owe a debt, he blazed a good bit of the trail for us in the (de)interleave code in ysf:
$ grep -r Sylvain . ./op25/gr-op25_repeater/apps/tx/doc.html:Too many to list; thanks to Matt Ames, Pavel Yazev, Jonathan Naylor, unknown author(s) of DSD (DSDAuthor), Mathias Weyland, Sylvain Munaut; undoubtedly others. ./op25/gr-op25_repeater/lib/ysf_const.h:// I hold Sylvain Munaut in high esteem for figuring this out.
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Harald Welte laforge＠gnumonks.org [op25-dev] -
ikj1234i＠yahoo.com [op25-dev]
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Matt Ames matt.ames7bc＠gmail.com [op25-dev]