[moefh]

TP-Link appears to be doing the minimum as in "minimum effort", as opposed to "minimum restriction to firmware modifications".

The article you linked shows that people saw it coming:

> Open source projects might not be fully out of the woods yet, though. A few commenters on the FCC’s post have pointed out that some manufacturers might choose to lock down the whole router—as opposed to just the radio—as a cost-saving measure, even if that’s not what the FCC intended.