[TriLUG] No more Linux on WRT54G???

[Rick DeNatale]

On 11/14/05, Shane O'Donnell <shaneodonnell at gmail.com> wrote:
> This sounds like a product manager or technical product marketing
> guy's good idea (in conjunction with support teams, etc.), motivated
> by support concerns and returns.
>
> I'd suspect that bricked WRT54Gs upped their number of returned
> products, and returned products in the consumer space are a pure drag
> on revenue.

That's probably part of why they did it, although they could always
reject warranty claims on boxes which had been loaded with unofficial
firmware.

The real reason may well have to do with the threat that Openwrt and
the like pose to Ciscos business model, since lots of WRT54s with FOSS
software replacements seem to be displacing more expensive Cisco boxen
in commercial applications.

The way it looks from here, if anyone knows otherwise, they tried to
make the use of Linux a stealth "feature." It was only after someone
discovered that the box had "Linux inside" and some pressure on them
to fulfill the requirements of the GPL that they made source code
available.

I don't know if they designed the WRT54 before or after Cisco bought
Linux, but now that they are part of Linux, I can well imagine that
there has been lots of internal corporate pressure to stop selling
arms to the "enemy."

> It can't have been a trivial effort to replace the OS and all
> associated behavior.  Backing off now would likely be tough, despite
> some initial problems.

And if the reasons for switching were business related rather than
technical, I don't think that they would be tempted to do it.

> Disclaimer: Although I work for Cisco, I have no insider information
> re: Linksys.  In fact, I think I had a little more BEFORE I started
> working for Cisco...

And my opinions are not based on ANY knowledge of Cisco per se, just a
long career in a large IT corporation.

--
Rick DeNatale

Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site
http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/