OpenWrt: A Linux OS targeting embedded devices

A lot of companies were built on this.

It's fun to see that "Amazon choice" portable routers are based on OpenWRT, and run OpenVPN and Wireguard out of the box.

The first DJI drones (original Phantom at least) used OpenWRT on their "Range Extender" boxes.

And all it took was forcing one company to divulge its proprietary closed-source codebase because they screwed up and incorporated copyleft code deep into their core.

Imagine how much progress could be made if a few other companies were forced to crack open their proprietary closed-source codebases...

Ubiquiti uses a fork of OpenWRT. Starlink's routers run it as well. I'm sure a ton of other vendors are using it

The WiFi silicon vendors seem to base their SDK/reference software on OpenWRT (albeit often badly-outdated versions), so almost everyone selling a WiFi box ends up using some variant or fork of OpenWRT. It's been a long time since the days of Linksys trying to cut DRAM costs by using something other than Linux. There are still exceptions like MikroTik where the OS and configuration tools are a main selling point (still Linux-based, but not OpenWRT).

I think many companies saw that and poopood GPL firmware.

I assume that about 20% to 50% of the home routers, Access points and Wifi mesh devices sold world wide are based on OpenWrt. Often some old versions of OpenWrt with many vendor modifications, the UI is always custom.

I know that the main vendor SDKs from Qualcomm, Mediatek, and Maxlinear are based on OpenWrt. I think only Broadcom uses an own Linux distribution which is not based on OpenWrt in their main SDK. Linux has a market share of about 99% in this market, I haven't seen VxWorks in any recent home router or access point.

They were poopooing that before the OpenWRT case. I don't think there's evidence to suggest that the OpenWRT case made them less willing to use GPL (especially since use of GPL would always have implied they should open-source the firmware derived from it).

Until then, some companies didn't seem to take it too seriously.

Where does Ubiquiti use OpenWRT? I saw that claim elsewhere in this thread but I'm pretty sure their original devices were based on Vyatta, and their newer stuff is a custom Linux OS of their own that is loosely Debian-flavored. Poking around in the terminal all the Ubiquiti devices I have used are very clearly unrelated to OpenWRT.

Ubiquiti started in outdoor wireless, point to point and point to multipoint. All their outdoor radios, cameras, and unifi APs are all running a version of openwrt.

EdgeRouters started on vayatta and then that went away (AT&T acquired Vayatta) and then that forked into VyOS.

Some of the Ubiquiti EdgeSwitches are running some other OS, but I can't remember what it was.

Source - Spent 14 years helping alpha / beta test, debug code and wireless problems, etc.