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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."

3 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Old Argument by bradgoodman · · Score: 0, Troll

    This sounds like the same argument that's been going around within the Linux kernel comunity about the "Open-Sourceness" of all these drivers which use binary-blobs - in partuclar, a lot of wireless Ethernet drivers, and stuff like NDISwrapper. It's idealistic to want all software to be open - but for companies which pour a lot of intellectual property into their drivers and firmware, I find it understandable that they wouldn't want their work made available to competitors' products. If they're not using any open-source in their binaries themselves, it's no violation. My opinion is this - if you don't like it, don't use it.

  2. Le'ts try this by djupedal · · Score: 0, Troll

    Everyone that has converted a router to OSS, raise their hand....

    Everyone else....leave the room.

  3. Re:Vote with your dollars by petrus4 · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'm assuming that this being modded down to 0, Troll was the usual FSF enforcement action against dissenting opinion.

    I'm really looking forward to a time when you stop doing that, guys. It's wrong, and it doesn't do anything other than make you look bad.