[LEDE-DEV] FCC killing open platforms and inovations [Was: Re: [PATCH] ar71xx: Add usable, inactive LEDs on OpenMesh devices]

[Petr Štetiar]

Hi Sven,

first of all I would like to thank you and your colleagues for your great work
and upstreaming of the support for all OpenMesh devices, opensourcing the
ap51-flash utils etc.

But on the other hand I'm wondering how should I upload my custom LEDE image
to my recently purchased OM5P-AC device as the U-Boot there is locked down and
accepts only signed OS images. I understand, that this is due to the recent
wonderful FCC project called "killing inovations in the wireless space".

Puting aside the GPL license violation of U-boot and kernel code which
OpenMesh ships in the devices, we don't have much options left. The only sane
way of fixing this is to dump the private keys out of the U-Boot and patch the
ap51-flash so the LEDE users are able to sign their own LEDE or any other
custom OS images and use the HW as they wish.

Then to please FCC again, you'll probably introduce new HW revision, where
you'll use some kind of crypto IC as key storage and we're at the same
position as now.  Waiting for someone to find a way around it. Instead of
improving stuff around us, we'll concetrate on this mouse&cat games.

OpenMesh makes great hardware, you guys make it work very well for us small
tinkerers which are not able to produce and sell like 10k units/year, so we
can't afford our own more open hardware. We even don't mind to pay little bit
higher price as the HW is rock solid and looks good on the desk.

Just my Monday rant. I understand, that you can't do much about it. It's not
personal, just wanted to start some conversation about this topic :-)

Thanks anyway for any response, even off-list.

-- ynezz 

Sven Eckelmann <sven.eckelmann at open-mesh.com> [2016-11-11 16:12:36]:

> From: Jaylin Yu <jaylin.yu at open-mesh.com>
> 
> OpenMesh devices have often LEDs which are not yet used by OpenWrt. These
> should still be available as disabled LEDs in the system configuration for
> easier modification.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Jaylin Yu <jaylin.yu at open-mesh.com>
> [sven.eckelmann at open-mesh.com: Remove LEDs already specified via diag.sh,
>  add wifi/status LEDs]
> Signed-off-by: Sven Eckelmann <sven.eckelmann at open-mesh.com>