Comment Re:No, it's a FIRMWARE competition (Score 1) 217
Actually, I would say the 200,000 they are putting up for the contest is an absolute steal... implementing all these features would typically take a team of quite a few engineers (or a few working much longer), and you'd probably end up paying them much more than 200,000 dollars combined regardless.
I agree with you there are some difficult areas. But I think it is in the interest of the Linux community be specific in helping contestants understand those areas and where OpenWrt and Linux stands today.
OpenWrt is already a firmware system. OpenWrt isn't exactly a slouch, it is very modular and on latest Linux 2.6.28.7 kernel currently for this platform. This contest is also on only one specific hardware platform that has a lot more RAM and CPU than what most routers have.
And you could build the web GUI on top of LuCI, X-WRT, Gargoyle codebase.
I don't think this is a huge company... I think they honest want to give back the code to Open Source. I still think we should encourage additional companies to chip in and add to the contest. But probably now that everyone sees the world economy tanking... but that might incentive some unemployed people. $160,000 for 6 months of solid work for two talented people isn't so bad.