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Re: [PLUG] Wish list for PLUG talks --> OpenWRT
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Sounds like a specious rationale to me. And a fair amount of the
business grade Dell Optiplexes I deal with at work are Broadcom, while
my home equipment includes Realtek. And while a lot of commercial
software companies give away a non-business version, I don't see how
that position, in and of itself, is a f/oss value.
On 3/2/09, Brian Vagnoni <bvagnoni@v-system.net> wrote:
> DD-WRT is free for Broadcom wireless chip sets only. You must pay an
> activation fee to use the firmware permanently on anything else even
> Atheros. DD-WRT does follow typical FOSS ideology.
>
> In one hand you have Broadcom who have proprietary drivers and code and the
> folks at DD-WRT make that firmware available for free. On the other hand you
> have Atheros who is working with the FOSS community building their stuff
> into the kernel and DD-WRT charges for that. DD-WRT in the future may
> include the Realtek wireless chip sets in the future as part of the no
> charge version.
>
> My understanding about the way the folks at DD-WRT see it is that Broadcom
> gear is considered residential and therefore no charge, and anything else is
> considered PRO gear which they charge for. My understanding is that they
> aren't charging for support they are charging for activation which is where
> it sticks in the crawl for most FOSS folks.
>
> There is quite a lot of bad blood and politics between the DD-WRT, Sveasoft,
> and the true ideological FOSS groups. I personally will use whatever works
> best for customers or myself in a given situation. It's like a $25
> activation fee if I wanted to use it with say my UBNT Router Station.
>
> I've also heard claims on some blogs of security issues with DD-WRT. Though
> these claims could just be pro-FOSS propaganda. I haven't see any papers on
> it, just talk. The politics are very annoying as it's hard to get to the
> real truth.
>
> As far as Open-WRT not having a web gui that's not correct. There is X-WRT
> and Webif, as well which run on top of Open-WRT.
>
> Honestly and with regard to the incredible skill level using the Linux
> command line I find here on this list I don't see why folks just don't use
> Open-WRT. However, if you just want something to plug and play with your
> Linksys/Broadcom router and don't care about the politics DD-WRT is the way
> to go.
>
> One thing I really like about the 3rd party firmware is being able to setup
> a cron job to reboot the wireless router daily; saves on service calls big
> time. Most customers I deal with are non-IT so they don't want to be
> bothered or billed for any of this stuff. They just want to focus on their
> core non-IT business and have the IT tools for them.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> Brian Vagnoni
> PGP Digital Fingerprint
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> --------------------------------------------------
> ___________________________________________________________________________
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artAlexion
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___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
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