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Harald Welte Calls Out Netgear's Open Source Sham

Posted by timothy on from the they're-workin'-on-it dept.

Simon80 writes "Harald Welte, known for his involvement in various open source communities, has pointed out the shortcomings of Netgear's open source router hype. Netgear's own astroturfed community site reveals that the router requires the use of binary-only kernel modules for the wireless and ethernet hardware, which is supplied by Broadcom. Also worth noting are the missing features in third-party firmware versions supplied by Netgear."

2 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Silly netgear by malevolentjelly · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Ha! Oh netgear, you just don't market to freetards. They'll aggressively attack any company that attempts to cater to them or their platform. They will not be happy until you have given everything away and are completely unprofitable, like Sun. So Broadcom won't let you gpl their drivers? That's too bad, now the FSF is going to hang you from the highest tree and make an example out of you for making those drivers available to be used by the community. Instead of reaching a difficult to market to segment, you're instead going to be attacked by the very people you sought to please.

    You just don't cater to people who are looking to undermine and exploit your product, it's not worth it. Save yourself some development time and just give them an unsupported breadboard with no firmware on any chips, some rough documentation, and tell them to have fun "hacking".

    What a hilarious waste of marketing money. Selling to an anti-commercial market segment...

    1. Re:Silly netgear by malevolentjelly · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Java sold services and hardware around java, that's where java made them money and open-sourcing java did not hurt that revenue one bit.

      You're right. Sun's doing great now.

      "freetard"

      And what was your point? What were you saying this entire time? My point was not indefensible because you just blundered on about some vague point regarding open source while I maintained my original focus on netgear being stupid for trying to sell to people like you and Sun being stupid for thinking open source would work for them like it would for Red Hat. You haven't refuted anything I said, hell you just refuted something I didn't say and then started jerking yourself off over it. What a spectacle! The funny thing is that Netgear's going to lose money and you morons will blame it on their proprietary drivers.

      What's important is that Sun drank the koolaid that morons like you dish out and that's a massive enterprise gone. They got taken for everything they're worth, and no shit eating freetard argument is going to change that.

      I call you people freetards because that's what you are. Religious morons with a dire inability to view your market for what it is: a sham. The successful players in open source are just really good at rubbing your egos so that you'll dish out free labor and accept half-assed products because you think you're all part of some big happy family. Meanwhile, you software is shit, the market is tanking, and all the Linux jobs are in China because you don't need innovative people to recreate unix. The only companies that profit off the community are those that take more from it than they give, and that's the end of it. Sun gave a lot more than they took and now there's another vacuum in the market. Long live the open source fantasy!