LEDE project is a spin-off of the OpenWrt project and shares many of the same goals. We are building an embedded Linux distribution that is easy for developers, system administrators, or other Linux enthusiasts to compile and customize software for embedded devices, especially wireless routers. The name LEDE stands for Linux Embedded Development Environment.The project members include most of the most active members of the OpenWrt community. We aim to revitalize embedded Linux development by creating a community that emphasizes transparency, collaboration, and decentralization.The established goals of LEDE are:

• To build an excellent embedded Linux distribution that focuses on stability and functionality.

• To have a regular, predictable release cycle along with device testing feedback from the community.

• To establish a transparent decision-making process with broad community participation and open meetings.

We decided to create this new project due to long-standing issues within the OpenWrt project/community that could not be resolved:

1. The number of active core developers is at a historical low, and there is no process for bringing in newcomers.

2. Unreliable infrastructure that has not been fixed due to internal disagreements and single points of failure.

3. Lack of communication, transparency, and coordination within the OpenWrt project, both within the core team and between the core team and the rest of the community.

4. Not enough people with commit rights to handle incoming patches, with little emphasis on testing and regular builds.

5. Lack of focus on stability and documentation.

To address these issues, we established the LEDE project on a different path than OpenWrt:

1. All our communication channels are public, some are read-only for non-members to maintain a good signal-to-noise ratio.

2. Our decision-making process is more open, with about 50/50 developers and super-users having voting rights.

3. Our infrastructure is simplified to ensure less maintenance work.

4. We use OpenWrt’s packages and GitHub feeds to make our merging strategy more flexible based on experience.

5. We place a strong emphasis on automated testing combined with a simplified release process.