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It's probably mostly due to legal liability. Real or perceived. It's gonna be risky to convince a jury you did your fiduciary duty to either consumers or stockh

It's probably mostly due to legal liability. Real or perceived. It's gonna be risky to convince a jury you did your fiduciary duty to either consumers or stockholders when opposing lawyer is saying "so you subjected my client's data to you didn't even write? Code anyone one on internet can change at anytime, etc. etc. legal is not about what is true or right or fair or probably it is about risk reduction/mitigation. A 20% chance to lose court case is too much. Or even chance of bad PR is something to be avoided.

cryptonym 6y ago
Doubt... Look at all the CVE on that kind of hardware, limited liability and actual loss of control to contractors. In this case, leading to not knowing you are actually selling Open Source technology. Look at the longevity of this router and all the features: "it was the perfect way to turn your $60 router into a $600 router". With closed firmware, you can artificially lock features and prevent everyone from adding them to cheap devices. You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Fun fact: Open Source is good for the environment.
- hobofan 6y ago
  > You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Routers aren't really the kind of devices that become obsolete quickly though, are they? A bulk of all users will just use they one they will get from their ISP. Since the main interest of ISPs is reduce ongoing costs for support (reduce calls to hotline and sending out technicians for the setup of a new router), they should also be motivated to provide cheap, long lived routers.
  - aksss 6y ago
    They are motivated to provide cheap, managed, reliable, plug-and-play units. Changes are driven by feature sets they need to stay competitive (eg new WiFi or wps standard) and wholesale deals.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
If this were the issue you'd think there would already be a series of lawsuits against the free software drivers currently available.
cbozeman 6y ago
LOL, Yeah like all the open-source software that drives 95% of the Internet? If this could be done, it would have been done already.

cryptonym 6y ago

Doubt... Look at all the CVE on that kind of hardware, limited liability and actual loss of control to contractors. In this case, leading to not knowing you are actually selling Open Source technology. Look at the longevity of this router and all the features: "it was the perfect way to turn your $60 router into a $600 router". With closed firmware, you can artificially lock features and prevent everyone from adding them to cheap devices. You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Fun fact: Open Source is good for the environment.

hobofan 6y ago
> You can also stop updating firmware after few years so everyone trash old devices and buy a new one. Routers aren't really the kind of devices that become obsolete quickly though, are they? A bulk of all users will just use they one they will get from their ISP. Since the main interest of ISPs is reduce ongoing costs for support (reduce calls to hotline and sending out technicians for the setup of a new router), they should also be motivated to provide cheap, long lived routers.
- aksss 6y ago
  They are motivated to provide cheap, managed, reliable, plug-and-play units. Changes are driven by feature sets they need to stay competitive (eg new WiFi or wps standard) and wholesale deals.

boomboomsubban 6y ago

If this were the issue you'd think there would already be a series of lawsuits against the free software drivers currently available.

cbozeman 6y ago

LOL, Yeah like all the open-source software that drives 95% of the Internet? If this could be done, it would have been done already.