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Musenki's Linux-Based AP Ships To Beta Customers

Posted by timothy on from the small-cute-wireless dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Austin, TX based Musenki ('musenki' means 'small wireless gadget' in Japanese) is poised to ship beta units of its first product -- the M-1 wireless access point that uses Linux. Pretty cool device that has open architecture and can be modified to accomodate growing 802.11 standards. Says they could have not have done it without open source community."

2 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Re:By the way... by ethereal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's funny is that I pay more attention to topics that I consider threatening - for example, Microsoft, infringements on civil liberties, etc. Whether or not open source is really a danger to you, do you really think burying your head in the sand is the appropriate response? Besides, you might learn something :)

    --

    Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and

  2. Support is going to be a challenge by elflet · · Score: 3, Insightful
    They reasoned that there would soon be a significant opportunity to supply devices to public access "hot-spot" providers, wireless ISP/infrastructure providers (WISPs), and various value added resellers (VARs).

    I love that they've done this on a shoestring, but the demands of deploying and supporting an end-user-device-cum-platform can crush a company. At a minimum, they'll need to issue patches in a form that can be installed without comprimising uptime, and VARs will demand "development kits" which are workable, documented, and supported.

    Both of these are crucial. If even a few devices are hacked, you can kiss commercial adoption goodbye. If development requires too much time, the VARs will look for other platforms -- they tend to be small outfits without much time for puzzling out the source code. (I used to build development kits for well-funded OEMs, and even they rode us mercilessly for better documentation, support, and frequent updates.)

    I hope they find a stable funding source and the best people they can. This is a worthy idea that deserves to work.