On 2023-03-09 11:07, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
| From: Alex Kink via talk <[email protected]>
| I'm sure there are more, but Linksys recently released a spiritual successor
to the WRT54GL, the router that gave a boost to the development of the 3rd
party router OSes (ddwrt, openwrt, tomato). Ability to install open source OSes
is even in the marketing material of this new router.
|
|
https://www.linksys.com/ca/wrt3200acm-ac3200-mu-mimo-gigabit-wi-fi-router/WRT3200ACM-CA.html
I have earlier successors. They are OK. But Linksys didn't go the
whole way making things easy for OpenWRT.
For a while Linksys was selling a version of the WRT54 that was
specifically for OpenWRT.
So at some point they were not anti-OpenSource.
Linksys did get acquired by Cisco around 2005 and Cisco is not
OpenSource friendly.
Not sure how that timing relates to your story.
Historically Linksys has been hostile to open source. Unfortunately,
that's true of most of the SoC vendors too.
Always remember. "the key to job security is product obscurity."
Making support harder keeps people from making your products last longer.
If the products last longer then people will not buy the newer version
as quickly and your stock-options may suffer.
Annecdote:
I was a contributor to FreeS/WAN IPSec software for Linux.
Linksys released a VPN router with FreeS/WAN. Without telling us and
without credit (pertectly legal). They also released it without
source (a violation of the license). I knew that it was my code
because the manual described a feature that was only implemented in
FreeS/WAN.
I bought one of those routers and found that the feature was disabled.
But I really wanted to use it.
So I requested the source code from them. They ignored my request.
Eventually they released the source. But not in a buildable form. By
that time the product was dead. The hardware never worked reliably
for the users. (I never actually tried it because it wasn't going to
be useful to me without improved firmware.)
---
Post to this mailing list [email protected]
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
--
Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133
[email protected] ||
---
Post to this mailing list [email protected]
Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
