Manufacturers who sell devices with modified OpenWrt and dont release the source code

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
21

I doubt any of them care. Thing about having the cheapest item is people quickly stop boycotting when the alternative is twice the price. Thus you can't really pressure China with boycotts, there are still plenty of uninformed buying them by accident or under one of the other 20 brand names that are the same item. If anything China would DDoS your page of shame site, also with no penalties.

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22

I can tell you that WatchGuard uses an old release of a modified OpenWRT on thier AP300, AP200 and AP100 units. Tap the serial headers and watch the boot. Someone please go after them :slight_smile:

23

Think of any random manufacturer of home network devices, and they'll be using openwrt to some extent.

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24

Not sold on Aliexpress but generally available on Amazon are Cudy routers.
http://www.cudytech.com/Store

Cudy OEM is based on OpenWrt and also provides OpenWrt builds. With Cudy's OpenWrt builds, it was easy to port a fair number of Cudy devices to OpenWrt build tree.

Like most devices, Installing OpenWrt voids the warranty.

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25

I recently won a complete refund from Alibaba while claiming the router with a IPQ6000 chip and running OpenWRT Chaos Calmer was old and unsafe which made the router unfit for purpose as it could not be updated. If everyone did that it may prompt a change in attitude from the Chinese manufacturers/suppliers which
was my primary goal.

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26

There is no conclusive evidence that this would happen. a person cannot judge the taste of an apple until s/he eat it first.

Let's someone implement the idea and time will either let it grow or it will fade silently.

27

Some of the SoC and HW vendors use Openwrt in their development, then they sign NDA with manufacturers and consequently the manufacturers push its clients to sign NDA as well if they want the SDK and/or the source code of the Openwrt firmware which they use.

Is that legal? I am not sure and I do not know, perhaps someone here (with a legal background) can give a feedback here.

what I know that the source code should be published and be available to all.

28

I have noticed the Chinese are putting version 21.02 OpenWRT on their boxes now.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006440277890.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.78c5BpajBpajGC&algo_pvid=60a0669e-8acb-4214-8fa7-4ffb5343959d&algo_exp_id=60a0669e-8acb-4214-8fa7-4ffb5343959d-0&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21GBP%21291.87%21218.90%21%21%21358.04%21268.53%21%40211b618e17095195113246935e4217%2112000037175397027%21sea%21UK%210%21AB&curPageLogUid=RI3mULBhJSUc&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A

Would this be upgradeable?

29

No, not without someone (as in, e.g. you) working on developing OpenWrt support for it.

These are embedded devices, which each need their own bespoke image exactly tailored to their (hardware- and software) requirements. There are no 'generic' images that will work on multiple different routers, either your exact model (down to its hardware revision) is supported - or it isn't (if it isn't, you may be able to propose a pull request adding support for it, but the necessary down-to-the-hardware development would be all yours, as you're the only one with the hardware on the desk).

"But the vendor claims it's running OpenWrt" or "but it's based on OpenWrt" holds no value (at all), if you are looking to run real OpenWrt or to upgrade to a newer version, someone -with the device on their desk- will still have to do 100% of the development work necessary.

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