UPDATE: 2:30 AM EDT, 10 October, 2009

Netgear has responded to allegations that their product is not open source. You can read the excerpts from that interview and new insight on the debate here: Netgear responds to open source concern for WNR3500L router

Original story follows:

On Tuesday we reported that Netgear had released the WNR3500L, an open source 802.11n router that supported popular third-party firmware projects like Tomato and DD-WRT. Not all is well in Netgear land, however, as it appears that the router may not be quite as open source as the company had implied.

Open source advocate Harald Welte explains:

The problem with this Open Source router is: It ships with binary-only kernel modules. Not only is this extremely Closed Source, but it also

• Has very practical security implications: You can never update your Linux kernel to get the latest security fixes, but have to run vulnerable old kernel versions.
• Is a very questionable legal practise. Netgear as the vendor is simply relying on the fact that none of the authors who have written parts of the kernel against which their binary-only module links will ever make copyright claims against them.

In short, he says “Netgear, you can do much better than that!”

The issue Harald says, is that the WNR3500L is not only legally questionable, but unsafe and proprietary. Based on the gravity of these allegations, we have contacted Netgear for a response.