LinkSys courts Linux hackers with WRT54GL (LinuxDevices)

LinkSys courts Linux hackers with WRT54GL (LinuxDevices)

Yay to LinkSys for maintaining a seperate assembly line JUST FOR THE HACKERS and partners who hack their box! Also yay to LinkSys for improving success of the main product line by lowering their production costs for a good product and making it even more attractive/competitive.

In my experience, having worked for a high unit volume/cost-sensitive embedded systems company (supermarket and grocery laser bar code scanners), it's all about manufacturing costs and amortizing development expenses over thousands of units. Pennies matter a whole lot. And yes, rather than staffing OS developers, the scanner engineering group paid for embedded OSes to build their application on top,

I can only guess that the cost savings on the smaller memory parts was a big savings, and the small added cost of VxWorks licensing and porting the application was minimal. There are many other considerations in the cost of the OS - are you paying someone else to support it (I would, in LinkSys' place) and if so, what kind of deal can you get? There are a lot of deals involved in such a change.

Disclaimer: I work for Wind River (first on VxWorks internals, now Linux internals) but I know no specifics about LinkSys dealings. I am not a company spokesperson.