What I don’t understand is what the motivation for manufacturers to not just install the open software is… are they trying to harvest charge time data or something? It seems like it would be easier to change any logos in software but leave the rest as is. Non tech buyers wouldn’t know or care… and nerds would buy it in droves. This goes for a lot of the low end network gear too. Are they really adding much value in software?
They must believe that there is, regardless of whether or not their _actually_ is. Manufacturers killing local control that is only used by extremely small numbers of their users is a pattern [0]. The only potential good reason I can think of is if the existence of these abilities allows users to get themselves into trouble when they don't fully know what they are doing, which could create a great deal of (expensive) support and so they decide to just remove the headache
