Re: Linksys WRT54G and the GPL

[greendisease <jaboutboul@gentoo.org>]

Hey All,

	A quick few comments regarding this situation.
	
	First, we shouldn't rush into anything before we gather some facts.  
Linksys may not be the ones developing the software for the WRT54G. In 
fact, many of these router "companies" don't do much besides branding 
at all.  I have spoken to a few friends at netgear and d-link and they 
confirmed that all hardware and software that is used in their router 
products is manufactured and developed in asia-pacific somewhere. They 
just license everything from the manufacturer. Proof of this is that if 
you cracked open many different models of vendors' routers you would 
see that the hardware is almost always the same board just in a 
different case with a different name on it.  Someone should look into 
this and confirm what Linksys does. It may be nothing more than the 
management @ Linksys not knowing what the product runs and what 
licensing restrictions apply.
	Second, Linksys is no longer its own entity since it was purchased by 
Cisco. We all know that Cisco is very committed to GNU/OSS. If anything 
comes to a dead end with Linksys we should be able to find some 
engineers at Cisco that can take care of the situation.
	IMHO, it looks like some very crafty developers somewhere in 
Asia-Pacific are hacking this hardware and software and doing really 
neat things.  We should first try to contact these people and explain 
to them our philosophy and try and get them to join the kernel 
development activities. After all they are already doing some kernel 
hacking and maybe based somewhere in a non-democratic country and are 
therefore afraid to open source their work for fear of political 
repercussion. Please Consider.
	Lets try to help before we harm, we might make a few friends.


Thanks,
Jack Aboutboul