OpenWiFi and the Telecom Infra Project, is this a path towards free WiFi firmware?

General Privacy & Security
1

There seems to be a problem with all firmware being closed and proprietary when it comes to Wi-Fi. It would be great if we could have firmware that is free/libre software but until now I got the impression that it’s very far from happening.

Then I stumbled on something about “OpenWiFi” and now I am wondering if this provides a path forward:

That page claims the following:

OpenWiFi is a community-developed, disaggregated Wi-Fi software system, offered as free open-source software, that includes both a cloud controller SDK and an Enterprise-grade Access Point (AP) firmware , designed and validated to work seamlessly together.

That mentions access point firmware, not sure if that means it is irrelevant for the consumer device side, or if the project includes something about that too.

Looks like OpenWiFi is somehow part of the " Telecom Infra Project": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecom_Infra_Project

What do you think, is there something promising here, some hope for more software freedom regarding WiFi?

1 Like
2

Hard to say. There’s a lot of waffle on that web site. My impression was that it isn’t relevant to WiFi client devices and hence not directly relevant to Purism’s most pressing challenges in the WiFi space.

If this project actually delivers something and if Purism decided to add a WAP to its product range then maybe there is some benefit.

3

3 minutes of glancing through the documentation didn’t tell me much about how it works. The Github page shows that a lot of dev work is happening, but I’m not sure which are the files for the OpenWiFi project specifically, since it is part of a larger project.