Hello everyone,
As you might know, Technicolor uses OpenWrt in all their new modems and routers and they seem to be quite proud of it.
One or more Technicolor representatives even gave a talk at the Openwrt Summit in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Technicolor was even listed as an OpenWRT "gold sponsor", whatever that means.
So I thought that getting the source code for the software running on their modem/routers would be relatively easy. That does not seem to be the case.
They have a page on their website dedicated to "Open Source" where they list which open source/free software is used in each of their software versions and they also have an email address to request the code. Great, right?
I sent three emails over the course of a month, but all of them were ignored (yes, I checked the spam folder). I then used the contact form on their website, even though it is meant to be used to request technical support.
The tech support guy told me that he contacted the "Open Source Support team" and was told that two of my emails had been received and that the code was being prepared and would be ready in about 30 days from when I sent the first one. After a month I didn't get any answer. I wrote back asking for the status of my request and was told to wait 10 more days. As you might guess, that time has passed too and I have yet to receive anything, even just a "sorry, we encountered some more difficulties and will be able to give you the code by...".
According to other posters in other forums, Technicolor's Open Source team either comes up with bullshit excuses telling you to wait n days and presumably hope that in the meantime you forget about your source code request, or they don't even bother to answer. The last known significant source code release from them seems to have happened in December 2015, when they released the code for the TC72xx series of cable modems.
For the record, I'm looking for the source code used in the TG789vac V2 modem/router, sw version 17.2.278-0901008, which AFAIK is based on Chaos Calmer. Any later version would be fine as well, if they for whatever reason don't happen to have that specific one.
I am also looking for the code used in the DGA4130 modem/router, sw version 17.3.0177-1681038 or later, and for the code used in the DGA4132 modem/router, sw version 17.3.0177-1681035 or later. However, I didn't ask for these last two yet, because apparently just sending me the code for the first one seems to be an insanely difficult task for them.
I'm sorry if I bored you with this rant, but the point
of this is, maybe major OpenWRT contributors should be made aware of this and, in my humble opinion, should consider not allowing any more Technicolor representatives to give talks at the next OpenWRT summit, at least until their company makes a significant effort to comply with the GPL and with other applicable free/open source software licenses that are at the heart of the OpenWRT/LEDE project. It is not fair for them to keep boasting about using OpenWRT if they keep blatantly ignoring its license terms, and it would be extremely hypocritical to ignore their non-compliance while inviting them to speak at the Summit.
What do you think?
(I'm sorry if my English is not perfect, I hope to have been clear enough nonetheless).