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I'm not sure about the last point. I would think hardware dedicated accelerators were done because it was the cheapest way to achieve that performance not becau
by d1zzy 6y ago
I'm not sure about the last point. I would think hardware dedicated accelerators were done because it was the cheapest way to achieve that performance not because it allowed to somehow bypass GPL. However, choosing to not run Linux but some proprietary OS could most certainly have something to do with that.
At the end of the day, was it a good thing? I would say it was. It opened many generations of home router hardware to being modded/replaced with user controlled software. It even created a market of its own where certain consumer router hardware is advertised as being designed to run custom/third-party software and where vendors themselves ship with some heavily modified software and release the sources for it from day 1 (which are the only wifi routers I shop for these days).
- wtallis 6y agoI can't speak to Broadcom's motivations, but the end result has certainly been that they are the least open source-friendly WiFi vendor, behind Qualcomm-Atheros, Mediatek, Marvell and Intel (client only). When Linksys wanted to do a successor to the WRT54 series trading on its open source reputation, Broadcom wasn't an option because they've made themselves the NVIDIA of WiFi.
- throwaway1999x 6y agoIndeed, hardware accelerators weren't introduced because of the GPL. What changed was that previously they were connected to the main cpu and driven by drivers that fell under the GPL; to avoid the GPL secondary CPUs were introduced not running linux at all.