[OpenWrt-Devel] Why OpenWrt sucks?

Tue Mar 10 19:41:18 EDT 2015

Hi Fernando,

I cannot predict nor foresee what HW vendors will do in the future but it
looks to me there's a trend like that. For example, there is some
collaboration [1] between NVIDIA and the developers of the open source
nouveau driver and also, Intel seems to release some of its codes as open
source [2][3], too.

Legal issues still hold vendors back from releasing their driver codes but
at least, there is some level of collaboration now between vendors and open
source developers which is a great step forwards compared to the times when
reverse engineering was the only possible way to create drivers for open
source OSes.

Regards,
Gergely

1:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/nvidia-seeks-peace-with-linux-pledges-help-on-open-source-driver/
2:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/13815/Intel-Graphics-Drivers-for-Linux-
3: https://01.org/

On 10 March 2015 at 22:33, Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Hi Gergely,
>
> I'm just curious to know what makes you be "pretty sure" that many vendors
> will start doing this in the future and overcome the possible legal or
> political issues they may have to do that ? Marvel was one of the worst
> cases I've ever seen here and I have no much idea what made them to release
> it (a miracle maybe?). Unless you were referring to "in the future" as next
> century I don't see that happening that soon.
>
> Other than that I fully agree OpenWrt is great, well developed and
> maintained.
>
> Best,
>
>
> On 10/03/2015 17:26, Gergely Kiss wrote:
>
>    Hi Valent,
>
>  first of all, I strongly disagree with people claiming that OpenWrt sucks
> because it doesn't. For me it rather looks like a well-maintained, rapidly
> improving project with a great number of actively supported hardware and
> quite a few people contributing to the project regularly. I can see dozens
> of patches published every day not only by the core devs but by many
> contributors which is a great thing and indicates that many people are
> trying to make OpenWrt *even *better.
>
> I must mention you had a point that made me smile - it's about being a
> miracle that openwrt works as good as it does. This reminded me to the DNS
> system. As we all know, it was never developed with a concept of creating a
> complex network service to be used in a worldwide network but more like as
> a simple "phonebook" for companies, schools and other small, autonomous
> institutions to avoid the need to remember IP addresses. Now, DNS is used
> worldwide by thousands of entities and is probably one of the oldest
> protocols still actively used on the internet and it still works pretty
> good despite its age. Miracles do happen sometimes and that's what makes
> our lives brighter. :)
>
>  Anyway, as far as I can see, more and more manufacturers (including
> wireless chip vendors) realize the benefits of open source and release
> their driver codes to the open source community. I clearly remember seeing
> some driver sources posted on this list directly by Marvell and I'm pretty
> sure that many other vendors will start doing so in the future. I think the
> reason why most vendors still haven't published their drivers is more like
> legal issues rather than technical or "political" ones. They have to meet
> regulatory requirements and respect the copyright of other people's work.
> Even if they would feel inclined to release their driver, they can't do so
> because of licensing issues.
>
>  For people complaining about OpenWrt, I would simply tell them that first
> of all, it's provided for free for everyone in the world so stop
> complaining. Also, being an open source project, it's always open for
> contributions. Everyone has the possibility to share ideas or implement
> features making OpenWrt a more stable, more robust and more versatile piece
> of software.
>
>  My fifty cents was to create a port of Seafile for OpenWrt - I'm using
> it myself at home and I'm very happy to see it running on my router with a
> USB HDD attached rather than running an additional home server 24/7
> consuming more power and taking up more room in my flat. At the same time,
> I'm happy to provide the same ability to other people because that's how
> it's meant to be.
>
> Do you think OpenWrt sucks? Then stop complaining and do something to make
> it better. It's that simple.
>
>  Cheers,
>  Gergely
>
> On 9 March 2015 at 21:02, valent.turkovic at gmail.com <
> valent.turkovic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> I see this or similar question of forums all the time and I have
>> answered it few times. I suggest we open a wiki page and contribute an
>> answer.
>>
>> Here is how I usually reply to similar questions, please give your
>> comments in your replies:
>>
>>
>> Why it OpenWrt slower than stock firmware? I can help by shining a bit
>> of light onto this subject. I'm developing custom firwmares based on
>> OpenWrt but I'm not OpenWrt developer, still as I have few years of
>> experience with OpenWrt I can explain why sometimes performance sucks
>> or there are some issues and bugs.
>>
>> OpenWrt has three main parts; linux kernel, software packages and
>> wireless drivers. OpenWrt developers work on all of them. Consider the
>> amount of code this is, and consider that all work is done by a
>> handful of OpenWrt developers. If you work in software industry you
>> know many people big companies hire to work on much smaller projects.
>> So be thankful it works as good as it does, it is actually a miracle
>> that it works as good as it does
>>
>> Main issue is that wifi chip manufacturers don't offer open source
>> wifi drivers. If Atheros and Broadcom understood Open source as Intel
>> does then you would get absolutely top speed and reliability from
>> OpenWrt wifi drivers. You don't get top notch performance with OpenWrt
>> because Atheros and Broadcom are choosing not release quality open
>> source drivers.
>>
>> Linux, BSDx and OpenWrt developers can only use other means to get
>> wifi devices to work, usually reverse engineering, and without support
>> from wifi chip companies it is not easy to support all features, get
>> awesome performance and stability.
>>
>> This is a long way of saying, that if performance sucks on OpenWrt you
>> should blame Atheros and Broadcom for not giving you (OpenWrt
>> community) high quality open source drivers!
>> _______________________________________________
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>> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>> https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
>>
>
>
>
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