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Harald Welte Calls Out Netgear's Open Source Sham
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."
One of the open firmware shortcomings is "WPA and WPA2 are not working." That is a pretty big shortcoming.
Or as in this case, one of the open firmware shortcomings: not being open. Epic fail Netgear, epic fucking fail.
I am the lawn!
*looks at his brand New Atheros 9k powered wifi card which requires no firmware.*
Yes, I have no plans to utilize any cards requiring a blob again. The bar has been raised.
Some problems:
1. They are proclaiming it to be open source, which is deceptive. It's "open source" except where it matters (device drivers/modules) from a maintainability perspective.
2. Their employees are astroturfing
3. Releasing open source drivers does not in any way reveal your chip mask and hardware architecture. Atheros' real competitors have access to electron microscopes and everything else it takes to buy a router off the shelf and copy chips exactly; simply keeping the drivers closed is not going to deter, say, realtek or broadcom in the slightest.
Besides, Buffalo is supporting open source through action (money) not just in press releases - beating Netgear to the punch by a couple of years. Netgear is just playing the "me too! Signed, metoo@aol.com" game.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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But that's not their problem.
It's yours. If you cause interference because you modified the firmware to get more than 1/4 wat, and you wind up interfering with licensed spectrum, Linksys isn't going to be on the hook. You are.
There is no law against modifying electronics.
Even if you didn't modify the router, if it was interfering with licensed spectrum, it's your repsonsibility to shut it off.
The responsibility does not lie with the manufacturer. It lies with the operator.
--
BMO
Activism helps spread the word to others so that their dollars can vote too. It also more aggressively lets companies know that they've done something wrong ... sometimes they really don't know unless you tell them.
In all fairness, Harald's original blog post isn't that rude to them; the Slashdot summary, I believe, is condescending and wrong.
However, I and many other folks are not as concerned about binary modules as Harald is. I view a binary module as a good first step - once a company gets comfortable with part of the code being open source, they'll gradually be receptive to open sourcing other modules. In many cases, yes, this takes a long time; and in some cases it causes companies to get scared and backtrack on open source commitments.
But still I view open source with some binaries as better than no commitments. I encourage people who view themselves as open source advocates to maintain a professional and respectful attitude towards companies who haven't opened up completely.
What a great way to gently remind them to have a positive attitude towards open source!
So you say we should e.g. congratulate Nvidia for supplying an obfuscated 2D-only piece of shit driver to "encourage" them to open the 3D driver as well? No, positive motivation does not work with corporations. Nothing gets done until lts of people complain. Providing half-assed open source support is actually more harmful that not providing any support at all, because it takes away the manpower needed to implement proper support. If 90% of users are satisfied with the limited functionality, it usually means you have 10x less developers working on proper support.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.