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> given that IIRC their RouterOS is essentially a specialized and highly customized GNU/Linux distribution (I could be wrong) Based on my conversations with pe
by fest 3y ago
> given that IIRC their RouterOS is essentially a specialized and highly customized GNU/Linux distribution (I could be wrong)
Based on my conversations with people who have worked there- RouterOS is running on Linux kernel, but it's so heavily patched, that upgrades to newer version are.. delayed until the benefits of the upgrade exceeds the cost. Up until the release of RouterOS 7 (circa 2021-2022) it was running on Linux kernel 3.3 (of 2012 vintage).
The drawbacks to this may not be obvious at first, but e.g. Wireguard support took a few years.
- cycomanic 3y agoShouldnt we be able to know this? If it is a Linux kernel there should be a download source somewhere, or are you saying mikrotik is violating the GPL?
- greyface- 3y agoAllegedly, you can get the sources on CD-ROM if you wire them $45: https://mikrotik.com/downloadterms.html https://mikrotik.com/downloadterms.html
- jameshilliard 3y agoCharging $45 for GPL sources on a CD-ROM is a violation of the GPL as you can only charge for: > your cost of physically performing source distribution and it must be distributed > on a medium customarily used for software interchange As a CD-ROM has not been customarily used for distributing this sort of software for many years(computers don't typically even have CD-ROM drives these days) this offer is clearly not GPL compliant.
- crest 3y agoGood luck finding a lawyer without an optical drive to take your case :-P-
- jrockway 3y agoI don't think you have a case, but once you get the CD-ROM you are allowed to redistribute the content on the CD-ROM. So you can upload it to the Internet and take out a billion dollars in ads to point the way to everyone, and their little $45 CD-ROM racket goes out of business. I don't know why they wouldn't just push it to Github for free, though. Any competitor that wants to borrow their modifications will gladly cough up $45. So they're just making people mad for no reason.
- jms703 3y agoForking like this is very expensive. I am curious what they feel they can do better than the linux kernel here. Otherwise, the benefit doesn't seem worth the investment and now you have a lot of lag.
- fest 3y agoLegacy (the development started in 90s), a lot of different CPUs/SoCs to cover (from various vendors, none of which are famous for their mainline-ness), drivers for ICs that are not publicly available (that you're forbidden to distribute in source form). Not that other networking companies are better in this regard, they just have been founded when OpenWRT was already around.