The Belkin router fiasco [LWN.net]

The Belkin router fiasco

Posted Nov 13, 2003 4:35 UTC (Thu) by torsten (guest, #4137)
Parent article: The Belkin router fiasco

Belkin thought this "feature" was not a particularly big deal.

I get tired of this childish innocence. They knew full well what they were doing, they knew they were undermining the trust of their customers in exchange for greater potential profits, and they knew if they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they would play dumb and release a firmware upgrade few would use.

This instead of doing the right thing, just making a router that works, and advertising their service in a more appropriate manner.

Blah, perhaps I should start my own hardware company. :)

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Just a case of minority opression

Posted Nov 15, 2003 0:51 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

This is just a case of what we Linux people are quite used to: products built for the majority not being appropriate for the minority.

I really believe this feature is innocuous to 98% of the users of the product. They are interactive users of the web who would see this as pretty much the same thing as an advertising popup.

On the other hand, if you're doing something less ordinary like running an automated process that connects to some http port and does stuff, you might be significantly inconvenienced by getting connected to the wrong http port.

Probably the only thing Belkin didn't count on here, and the only reason it backed down as much as it did, is the bad PR.