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Comment by dm2 | Hacker News Reader

Is this needed?

I've been using Tomato for years and DDWRT is also available. (only using Tomato because my current router status for DDWRT is "Work in Progress")

Both are open source, compatible with most routers, and have a nicely developed user interface.

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

http://www.dd-wrt.com/

https://openwrt.org/

http://www.polarcloud.com/tofu

Maybe updating the title of this post would help with the confusion. "...Help Us Build an Open Wireless Router Firmware"

I'm all for competition and alternatives to products, but developers might be able to better allocate our resources rather than create a clone that might not be necessary. Such as ensuring existing projects are secure.

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Both are open source

For varying definitions of "open source" (a considerable amount of functionality is offloaded to binary blobs in many models).

In terms of duplicating effort, in the page linked it specifically states it's based on Cerowrt, which is in turn based on Open WRT (which is actually FOSS, instead of just in name).

More importantly, it doesn't say "...Help Us Build an Open Wireless Router Firmware" because that's not the goal of this project. As you clearly pointed out yourself, and as they implied in the post they made, that's already been accomplished multiple times over. The goal is to make a router designed for the Open Wireless movement, which is why, in the first sentence, they link to https://openwireless.org/

That makes sense.

They could even help support their project by selling routers with open-source firmware already installed (if allowed by the manufacturer).

The current firmwares are kind of stagnant (considered good enough I suppose).

Good idea, selling routers with this firmware would be beneficial to router manufacturer(s) as they get a new marketing tool ( Open Wireless Compatible TM -mark), which would skyrocket market adoption. That to happen needs brand value, so lets hope this project catches on.

Those firmwares function but really don't have elegant and easy to use user interfaces. If you read the link, EFF wants to create some easy to use router firmware for ie. small businesses to run a open network from with QoS, all from a "minimalist secure interface" that selfupdates. No firmware today has got those last two parts down, and it's really hard to set this stuff up when you aren't doing network operations as your day job.

I'd rather see them contribute those features to openwrt than reinvent the wheel. Again.

It's based on CeroWRT, a fork of OpenWRT, so they could probably do just that.

FYI: CeroWRT is a fork based around David Taht's work combating bufferbloat. It describes itself as a project built on top of OpenWRT, which sounds slightly less scary IMO than fork.

http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt

How is luci not easy to use, or inelegant? (particularly say, with luci-theme-bootstrap). I strongly doubt EFF have some magical idea to create a simpler interface. It's trivial to install luci-app-qos, luci-app-samba and other basic software that a small business would need. It sounds like they just want a different default config for OpenWRT/CeroWrt, where multiple zones are enabled by default, and one is opened up.

The idea of does everything for me, including updates and minimally secure are disjoint ideas - you can't have security unless you have complete control over your own device - and OpenWRT with luci already provides that. Relying on a third-party to do your updates, even if it's a trusted body like the EFF is always open to attack.

OpenWrt doesn't provide the self-update by default, and I hope it never decides to add such thing, unless we get reproducible builds, and build some kind of network consensus to verify the integrity of packages, and that they were derived from specific source code (as Nix/Guix and Debian's ReproducibleBuilds are attempting). In other words, we need to remove the centralization of updating, because it's such an easy target for the likes of you know who.

Bootstrap make LuCI look better, but it's still complex and full of non-human-readable stuff. For example, the interfaces on my router are called ge00, gretap0, ip6tnl0, pimreg, se00, sw00, sw10, teql0, tunl0. I work on networking for a living and I have only a vague idea what those are.

Also, you know what else is such an easy target for the likes of you know who? Unpatched systems.

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