one-day sale on hackable wireless router

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 11:53:47AM -0400, James Knott wrote:
| > The source code is available from that site, so if you're so inclined 
| > you can hack it.
| 
| Having source code is not the same as having the ability to generate and
| load new firmware.  Just look at the tivos.

True.  But it is even worse than that.  Even if the system will let
you flash firmware that you have built (i.e. has a flash mechanism and
does not require the firmware to be signed with a key that only the
manufacturer has), there are real practical problems that I've
observed:

- the released software is generally incomplete.  Some of the stuff
  built on top of Linux is usually proprietary.

  Sometimes one can replace this with open source, sometimes not.

  Sometimes one can grab the binary of the proprietary stuff from
  inside a firmware load and put it in your firmware build.  A messy
  job.

- Often the build system isn't provided and it is work to recreate it.
  If you don't exactly recreate it, you may well expose latent bugs in
  the source code.

  Often the build system requires a particular (unspecified) host
  system.  That may be awkward to discover and provide.

- Some systems have no recovery system for when you flash buggy
  firmare.  If you build it, it will be buggy.

- Too often, the released source doesn't actually match the released
  firmware.

- the community of interested hackers is too small to spread the
  required development load

I think that all of these have happened in the case of the Linksys
WRV200.  A great disappointment to me.

I bought one on the strength of the downloadable manual.  It had a
described an IPsec feature that was only implemented by FreeS/WAN and
its successors.  I wanted this feature and I was amused to buy
something off-the-shelf with code that I wrote.

- the feature was not, in fact, available.  Because the GUI didn't
  support it (the code underneath certainly did).  When I phoned
  support, they said the manual was wrong.  I should have returned it
  there.

- they dragged their feet releasing source.  Even when they did, it
  was for old versions.

- the system had and has bad reliablility.  I could probably have
  fixed that (for free, with source code).  The Openswan folks
  approached them offering consulting help (for money) but were not
  used.

- there is a community of complainers.  All share voodoo tips to make
  it work.  With real source, this could have been translated into
  free help.

A product with promise is a boat anchor.  Anyone with sense has given
up on it.

The price and raw hardware specs were quite good.  The software and
support were useless.  I'm embarassed that they used my software.

================

The OpenWRT project is great.  It appears to have too much work for
too little manpower.  So join in!
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