Open Source Router Firmware OpenWRT 15.05 Released

aglider writes: The newest stable iteration of the famous and glorious OpenWRT has just been released in the wild for all the supported architectures. The latest version is 15.05, codenamed "Chaos Calmer" after a cocktail drink, just like all previous ones. Major changes from the official announcements: "Linux kernel updated to version 3.18. Improved Security Features. Rewritten package signing architecture based on ed25519. Added support for jails. Added support for hardened builds. Improved Networking Support. Platform and Driver Support." For the full details you are welcome on the forums while the firmware itself and extra packages are available from the distribution servers.

Comments

Enjoy it while you can.

[ElectraFlarefire]

Just a reminder: http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

Re:Enjoy it while you can.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wrong. The people who are actually knowledge about this issue include lawyers at the EFF, Software Freedom Law Center, campaigns people at the FSF, software developers who were responsible for drivers/firmware for some of wifi cards with *the software defined radios* that the FCC has recently passed rules on and is proposing new rules on (Adrian Chadd & Luis R. Rodriuez), OpenWRT developers, libreCMC developers, CURRENT Qualcomm employees, *one of the largest companies manufacturing routers* (who currently wishes to be left unnamed), ThinkPenguin (one of the leading companies working on free software router software and selling a 100% free software router), the person behind the recent BufferBloat improvements that made it into the mainline kernel and has significantly reduced latency, and others.

There are people who are undermining the campaign (authors who *never* got in contact with the Save Wifi campaign) by spreading miss-information because of a lack of knowledge on *the entirety of the rules*. There are MORE rules than claimed and the FCC has been quoted as double speak (saying one thing to imply its a non-issue, but if you realize what they are saying and its implications you would know it is *a big* f'ing issue).

After the US Canada & Europe will also be passing similar rule changes. *We are already seeing the practical implications of rules already passed and being proposed as manufacturers are adding locks (signature checking) to router firmware* whom had *never* done it before so to suggest this is being blown out of proportion is non-sense. The manufacturers are being required to revise *old* router firmware and re-certify with the locks. So routers bought yesterday that didn't have the locks bought today now have them in there firmware.

The people being quoted by some of the authors writing articles that seem knowledge were quite miss-informed. Simply working at Qualcomm doesn't put you in a position to judge the campaign or the rules. There are *multiple* rules that are the problem some of which have passed and some of which are proposed. The rules are *NOT* straightforward. There is nothing defining software defined radio for instance and *ALL* devices now are software defined radios. *The actual lawyers* who are dealing with this havn't been quoted and the FCC is saying "we don't require locks", but the practical reality is *ALL* manufacturers will implement said locks because its the only way to comply with the rules and EVEN the FCC is assuming that the only way anybody will comply is via these locks. They EVEN stated a question during the certification process to the effect of "How will you prevent the loading of third party firmware such as DD-WRT?"
 

Re:Not a big deal.

[BradMajors]

Yes there is... the exciting part would be the closing some of the one thousand open bugs and providing documentation.

You won't be able to install OpenWRT much longer

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been a lot of misinformation being spread by certain technical news publications about proposed rule changes. The FCC has passed rules and is proposing new rules that are *resulting in* manufacturers locking down there devices so that users can't flash OpenWRT and other third party firmware. See www.savewifi.org for more information on how you can help stop the *proposed rule changes* NOW. The rules which have already passed are also a problem and there will be further efforts to get them overturned.

We are already seeing manufacturers add signature checking (locks) to the stock firmware they ship on *older routers* as a result of the re-certification process. Manufacturers are asked "How are you preventing the loading of third party firmware such as DD-WRT?". The FCC has been quoted saying that they don't care how its achieved, but the reality is the quick and easy way and really only way for most/all manufactures to comply with these rule changes *in practice* is to lock the devices down. The FCC quotes are misleading to those who don't understand this and at least two articles have used this to imply it is not an issue despite *many* people saying it is an important issue (even within these articles).

There have been quotes from Qualcomm employees as well to add "clout" to the stories. These quotes were BS. The people at Qualcomm involved in the campaign, knowledgeable, and fully informed were not the people quoted. There is one current employee and actual ex-Qualcomm developers who worked on the software defined radio wifi chips now being impacted participating in the Save Wifi campaign. Adrian Chadd has reviewed the rule changes and is *working on the Save Wifi campaign*. Don't trust my words- go look at the PUBLIC mailing list archive yourself.

Lawyers, activists, and technologists from a variety of groups who have worked on FCC rule changes in the past are also involved in the campaign. They're not agreeing with the assessment that this is a non-issue or being blown out of proportion. The Electronic Frontier Foundation AND the Free Software Foundation are both involved and *big* participants in deciphering the rule changes. They are both coming out with statements as part of the Save Wifi campaign. The Save Wifi coalition is preparing letters and setting up a campaign similar to Dear FCC, SOPA, and similar campaigns to fight this.

The current proposed rules are what are currently at issue for the campaign, but there will be efforts to overturn rules already passed, and stop similar rules from going through in both Europe and Canada. It's no surprise that there is so much confusion as it's taken a month and participation by a dozen *highly involved* participants from different areas to grasp the significance of the problem and are still figuring out a road map on fighting it.

Re:OpenWRT vs DD-WRT

[hcs_$reboot]

comes with DD-WRT straight from the factory. Full open source, etc.

No, dd-wrt cannot be considered a fully open source project, as Openwrt is. See "Building_DD-WRT_from_Source". And an excerpt:

Building DD-WRT from source is difficult and according to the text here definitly not working on first try. You will see lots of strange errors and many confusing install-scripts. The forum is full of people who were not able to make this install-procedure running through. The infos in the forum is much newer than these here, but also very confusing and mixed up. (...) Brainslayer does not have the time to do everything ...

dd-wrt really looks like more of a closed project, that still benefits from the historical confusion related to is-it-or-not-open-source. This other quote from dd-wrt wiki is interesting

At present DD-WRT is available for free, although a different business model is being drafted by BrainSlayer in order to pay his salary, as this is his full time job

. And it seems dd-wrt makes arrangements with some wrt makers - this is why their firmware is available sometimes way before Openwrt.
I tried to install dd-wrt - because for some reasons it's what recommend people in forums - on some routers, and always had a problem: either instability, settings disappearing after a few reboots, features missing...

On the other hand, Openwrt is fully open source and is easily customizable. Installed it on many routers, including for friends, shops ... never a problem, stable, efficient. I even compiled the huge source to change the way dhcp delivers info to clients. I was amazed as how the projects is clean, compiles flawlessly. A good old open source. The Openwrt volunteers put a lot of work into these small devices, and they deliver. I don't think the bigger success of dd-wrt compared to Openwrt is legitimate.

Re:OpenWRT vs DD-WRT

[chill]

You're confusing "not open source" with "sloppy mess". From the same link you sent:

DD-WRT is a third party developed firmware released under the terms of the GPL for many IEEE 802.11a/b/g/h/n wireless routers based on a Broadcom or Atheros chip reference design.

Here is a tutorial on compiling DD-WRT from source: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=269372

The business model doesn't change the GPL nature. Brainslayer arranged professional versions with customization for commercial applications. (Note: Stock, GPL DD-WRT works find on the Buffalo WZR-1750, so it isn't a matter of close-source tweaks.)

I'm interested in OpenWRT because it *is* a cleaner code base and more modular in nature. I like the idea of the packages vs a monolithic system. But that doesn't address the question of why one GPL project has working code for a particular system and another can't use it for their own GPL implementation.

I'm a bit freaked out at the moment

[Anonymous Coward]

I just updated a router with a complicated configuration (several wireless networks, manual firewall configuration, switch configured with multiple VLANs, web interface through ssh only, wireless on a channel outside of 1-11, etc.) from Barrier Breaker to Chaos Calmer, and absolutely everything just keeps working. I want to complain about this somehow, because it freaks me the hell out, but I don't know what to complain about. What the fuck, folks.