OpenWrt vs Defense positions

[Peter Naulls]

On 5/1/23 16:42, Dave Taht wrote:

> 
> How a ragtag bunch of unincorporated (mostly?) peacenik hippie types
> can co-exist with devices being built by militaries out of this stuff
> I have few ideas. I prefer to shrink the world, and produce stable,
> secure, software, for everyone that wants it, but I look at the
> contentious places where it also goes (like space, or spacex) and
> wonder how it will all end up, and who will maintain it, improve it,
> or attempt to subvert it.

Yes, and on a parallel note about security (not "Security" aka Defense),
OpenWrt is good, but not excellent. This has been a long term interest
of mine, largely due to career need rather than enthusiasm per se - the
product I'm working on now has been through multiple security reviews - much
of it without question is theater.

See a discussion I started on this some months ago - there's been a bit
of a historic lack of appetite for this topic, partly because some of
the theater is certainly high-class nonsense, and partly because of lack of 
resources - OpenWrt doesn't really have a dedicated security effort (if I missed
something in recent months than I apologize), and some of the suggestions
I've made have gone into the ether.

Still, I think there's a growing recognition of its use - certainly
many home routers and no little number of special-user routers run it
as well as commercial applications and of course the original topic
I raised.  OpenWrt now has vastly more clout in the world than superficial
visibility would suggest.