Harald Welte's blog

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 Netgear trying to fool their users with "Open Source Router"

Two days ago, Netgear has announced the so-called "Open Source" WNR3500L router, together with an equally "Open Source" MyOpenRouter community.

The problem with this Open Source router is: It ships with binary-only kernel modules. Not only is this extremely Closed Source, but it also

• has very practical security implications: You can never update your Linux kernel to get the latest security fixes, but have to run vulnerable old kernel versions
• is a very questionable legal practise. Netgear as the vendor is simply relying on the fact that none of the authors who have written parts of the kernel against which their binary-only module links will ever make copyright claims against them

Read more...
http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2009/10/07/#20091007-netgear_myopenrouter

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