So, what can be done about / learned from this? Competitive advantage of secrets (standard anti-BSD argument) The standard response is that maintaining a patc

So, what can be done about / learned from this? Competitive advantage of secrets (standard anti-BSD argument) The standard response is that maintaining a patchset is expensive. Do devices get frequent (and comprehensive) enough firmware updates for this to actually matter? I would assume this varies with the type of device. Manufacturer is using binaries that they don't have source for This could be recursive, or it could be that the binaries were obtained by questionable means. Are there other reasons (if so, those would probably apply to the final device manufacturer as well and so still be recursive)? I didn't see anything about (perceived) patent liability in the article, maybe companies fear that releasing source would invite suits from patent trolls? Are there more reasons? Non-repeatable build process If a proper process is actually cheaper, shouldn't companies that don't have one die out? Is this happening or not? Why?