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Netgear's responce to open source criticism
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 13 October 2009, 20:03 IST |
1 Comments
Bangalore: When last week Netgear announced its RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router, calling it an open source Linux platform, critics said that the company is not complying with the open source GPL license. To this Netgear has responded saying that it is not true.
Netgear has now publicly posted on the issue of its alleged GPL violation: "Concern has been raised on the presence of binary modules in the pre-loaded Netgear firmware. The factory-loaded firmware by Netgear on the WNR3500L router is there for those customers who simply want to use the router "as-is" with the features provided by the Netgear firmware. It is no different from the millions of other Netgear Linux routers we sell in the market. We do offer the GPL code on our websites for all customers to download, review, and even to modify it: something many of our development partners have already done."
The issue, as first raised by gpl-violations Author Harald Welte was that: Users can never update their Linux kernel to get the latest security fixes, but have to run vulnerable old kernel versions. "One would have hoped that Netgear did thoroughly study the Open Source market that they're trying to address," Welte wrote. "Apparently they either did not do that, or they chose to ignore the values/rules by which this community works, or they had somebody with limited understanding to advise them on this."
In Netgear's view they believe they have complied with the GPL. "We understand that the open source community generally takes exception when factory loaded firmware written in Linux that is placed on routers or other hardware includes binary only kernels. As it has been rightly pointed out, this has been a continuing saga between any company and the open source community. As for use of Linux kernel 2.6 on WNR3500L drivers, we are already working on it. Please stay tuned for more updates in the next few months.
