Router OS on Non-Mikrotik Platform Challenge

RouterOS General
1

Why does MT not want to port ROS Firmware to other manufacturer’s hardware ?

Perceived Market Advantage might be a reason, but the way Ubiquiti has been adopted kind of blows that out of the water.

You already (regularly) port it to New hardware platforms (your own new ones), so you can clearly do it, and the OpenWRT team have made the bulk of it amazingly easy.

ROS is Good Enough for people to Pay for it.
Not a lot of money, but Pay for sure. I certainly would.
ROS is much better than DD-WRT or other alternatives.

In my estimation, this year will be a Turning Point: either port your most excellent ROS to other platforms (as you have been doing anyway) or you’ll die in the turmoil of newer and cheaper alternatives.

Personally i would prefer Mikrotik to Live, as your stuff is Really Good. ROS Rocks.

To add to the pressure, i might be releasing a GPL firmware soon for as many platforms as OpenWRT supports, including Ubiquiti, TP-Link, some Mikrotik etc - depends on who is interested.

This Firmware does all that i need as a Wisp, and will run on a lot of different hardware.

I just wish ROS would run on more kit, as it could, if MT so desired.

2

I kind of agree. I believe RouterOS has far more potential (and has some catchup to do as well). I think Mikrotik should not invest time into specific hardware, but concentrate purely on the OS side of things. Let hardware vendors create hardware (general hardware or whatever) and port RouterOS to all MIPS/x86/ARM router-based hardware variants (again only software related).

That said, Mikrotik is, I believe, a great software company, specializing in kick-ass routing software. I’d like to keep it this way.

3
  1. We prefer spending time on making RouterOS better, not porting it
  2. We prefer if you buy RouterBOARD, not some competitor stuff