lkcl . wrote: > On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 5:07 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn <[email protected]> wrote: > > Thus, what concerns me here most is that there are accusations going > > back to 2008 on this mailing list that Mikrotik's source code is not > > complete,
I read that too late after I have bought a Mikrotik-Router. My mistake! I bought a Mikrotik-Router for the GNU / Linux firmware. When you first start, the license is displayed with the paragraph regarding the Software Sources. ... € 45,- each CD !... Router-OS Firmware has an upgrade all few weeks! Then I read, in this regard the arrogant responses of employees in the Mikrotik forum. I wanted to smash the Mikrotik-Router! I am not a lawyer and english is not my native language. Licenses and rights are difficult to understand. However, this is against my perception of free software! Use it and do it on ftp, damn! That was my first&last unit of Mikrotik! Then I discovered Ubiquity. The Ubiquity people get it right. The GPL source code of the new firmware can be downloaded directly from the ftp servers. They've a very good user-community and friendly employee. Sometimes a SDK is available for their firmware. Have some wireless router of those and wait for the Vyatta / Debian-based EdgeRouter ER-8. I can on the device: apt-get install 'all-the GNU stuff I want' > it's slightly more complex than it first seems. mikrotik's success > comes from their "remote management" system which is similar in a way > to cisco router management system. ...and from the very good user-community and their exellent hardware. > to achieve this, mikrotik *heavily modified* the underlying commands. > by that i mean that when you ssh or telnet into a mikrotik router, > instead of the "/bin/route" command having parameters that you would > type on the command-line, they MODIFIED /BIN/ROUTE so that it takes > parameters in BINARY FORM ON STDIN. something to that effect, > anyway. and they've done this across the *ENTIRE* command-set [*1] > > so in other words they have a complete binary command-protocol on top > of a heavily-modified normal and standard GNU/Linux command set, > covering ifconfig, iwconfig, route, management of files in /etc and so > on. > > PART of that is PROPRIETARY. > > PART of that is obviously GPL'd and other free software licensed software. Thank you for this good explanation. > the last time i checked (which admittedly was back in 2005 when i was > investigating reverse-engineering their binary command protocol as a > way to easily manage thousands of mikrotik routers) they were > reasonably GPL-compliant. i found the source code. it was great... As far as I know, this old code is all there is to download on the internet today. > [1] openwrt does this is a much more sane manner! Yeah, and runs on my Ubiquiti WiFi devices. Ciao Marco! -- Debian Hint #35: The package 'devscripts' contains some useful scripts for users who want to help to improve Debian, e.g. wnpp-alert, rc-alert and bts.
