Netgear now touting open source WRT-compatible wireless router

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Tue Jul 1 18:25:22 EDT 2008


On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 2:28 PM, Gerry Hull <gerry at telosity.com> wrote:
> Or, Buy a used Cisco router on Ebay ...

  I thought with Cisco, the IOS (firmware) license wasn't
transferable, so even if you bought used hardware, you still had to
buy an IOS license from Cisco?

  (One can violate the license, of course.  But I, personally, find
that dishonest and distasteful.  Especially since many depend on a
license -- the GPL -- for certain Free Software protections.  Indeed,
one of the big reasons third-party firmware modifications in the SOHO
router market took off was that the GPL required LinkSys to publish
their source code changes.  (Which they only did after some legal
prompting.))

-- Ben


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