Voting 2024-01-17 - OpenWrt One

Started by: John Crispin

OpenWrt One will be a wireless networking device designed for free and open source software enthusiasts, encouraging people to tinker with and learn about embedded development and Linux networking.

OpenWrt One is intended to benefit OpenWrt as the project shall receive a share of the revenue for each unit sold.

Our intent is to build a unit with OpenWrt friendly hardware specifications which makes it well supportable and serves as a potential role model for manufacturers - it will receive the same level of community support as other OpenWrt capable devices, there will be no priority tier, no paid support channels and no dedicated OpenWrt flavours or similar. The device support shall be fully upstreamed into vanilla OpenWrt.

OpenWrt One is a private voluntary initiative led by me (John Crispin). The initial R&D cost for the ODM design is privately paid for by me, without utilising any OpenWrt funds. I will not be making any profit from this. To reduce liabilities, time to market and burden on individual developers or the project as a whole, I propose to co-develop the OpenWrt One PCB together with the ODM behind the Banana Pi community. The OpenWrt One will reuse design aspects as well as the form factor of existing Banana Pi PCBs and enclosures.

OpenWrt One is *not* intended to be:

1. A contender for commercial off-the-shelf Routers or APs.
2. A wired router achieving gigabit NAT speeds
3. A bleeding edge Wi-Fi 6e/7 access point
4. A Network Attached Storage device
5. A high speed ethernet switch

The “One” rather aims to be:

1. As open as possible and fully compliant with all copyleft and other FOSS licenses it uses
2. An educational platform for tinkering with/learning about open hardware and Linux
3. A way to donate to the OpenWrt project while receiving a nice gadget in return
4. Provide expansibility through mikroBUS, GPIOs and PCI/e M.2
5. Software unbrickable and easily recoverable without additional means
6. The satisfaction of achieving an overdue personal objective

By starting this vote, I am asking fellow developers of the OpenWrt project to:

a) Endorse the usage and mention of the OpenWrt trademark and logo for the OpenWrt One hardware device, allowing the ODM to print the OpenWrt logo on the silk screen and enclosures as well as branding the resulting device “OpenWrt One” and marketing it as such. Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) agreed to take care of the legal agreement with the ODM if the vote succeeds.

b) Authorise SFC, Inc. to register an IEEE MAC Address Block Large (MA-L) on behalf of OpenWrt. The required one-time payment will be covered by private, non-project funds.

c) Agree that SFC will receive a percentage of the revenue of each unit sold by the ODM, on behalf of OpenWrt with the received funds being directed towards the OpenWrt project under the existing fiscal agreement in order to cover future expenses. Right now I am aiming for a share of around 10% with an expected price tag of around 100$ per unit.

The vote shall be concluded within 10 days.

In case the vote succeeds, the next steps will be:

1. Finalise the hardware design with the silicon vendor (MediaTek) and ODM (Banana Pi) - expected to take 4-8 weeks
2. Receive engineering samples (15 units) and distribute them to interested parties
3. Provide samples to SFC for copyleft/FOSS license compliance verification.
4. Once the engineering samples are confirmed to be working, the ODM will start producing the initial batch of units

Please understand that until the vote succeeds I do not have the mandate/authority to further any discussions with the involved entities on behalf of OpenWrt. Final technical and legal details will be clarified once the consent is given through this vote.

John