Hi Neels,
On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 08:04:26PM +0200, Neels Hofmeyr wrote:
The entire openbsc.git repository will cease to be used. We will not remove parts from it, we will basically lay it to rest as a whole.
This is unrealistic, as there are people who will likely want to continue to use OsmoNITB for at least some time to come. I'm thinking of Rhizomatica or Fairwaves, for example. Or even various of our 'sysmoBTS starter kit' users until they do a major upgrade to 201705. There still might be the occasional important bug fix that needs to be applied to openbsc.git
My idea would be: In order to avoid anyone to submit patches against the GPRS components in there, I think it makes sense to remove those parts and make sure that we have no two [except for 3G support] identical copies of the SGSN (plus gtphub, plus gb-proxy) code lying around. This will help people who are continuing to use OsmoNITB to get the benefits of newer versions of SGSN & co, without 'accidentially' sticking to old versions.
For the remaining NITB code , there should be a strict policy of first applying any change to OsmoBSC or OsmoMSC, and only then optionally apply it to openbsc.git.
For sure we should still accept at a minimum clear bug fix commits for the NITB. If somebody in the community (or a paying sysmocom customer) wants to maintain even new features going into the NITB, then we should simply bless one such person as the legacy NITB maintainer. The policy remains: New features and fixes must first be applied to BSC/MSC and only then to NITB.
Regards, Harald