[lazyier]

If you are buying a Cisco router you are buying a closed source product. Why would you expect them to open source anything when you are happy to give them money for closed source firmware?

You are literally paying them for being closed source.

Stop rewarding these corporations for screwing you over and they will cease to screw you over. Either they will change their ways or go out of business if enough people feel the way you do. And, regardless, you would have solved these sorts of problems for yourself long before that happens.

It's been a very long time since Cisco was the only game in town for enterprise networking. Companies like Broadcom have released powerful ASICs that allows practically anybody to build a high performance routers and switches.

[salawat]

I would not hold up Broadcom as being any better than Cisco in the openness department. If anything it's just more of the same, which while it technically satisfies the definition of competition, does not largely modify the lands ape of networking dedicated hardware in the more open direction.

[hansel_der]

true

hyperscalers got into building their own switches a decade ago. whitelabel silicon and software _IS_ available, but the entrenchement is still huge as noone ever got fired for buying cisco.

[aaaaaaaaata]

I wouldn't hire someone that mentioned we should purchase Cisco.

[nsteel]

Don't Cisco use those exact Broadcom chips in these types of low-end products? A high-performance chip is just one part of the product, you need software also.

[Kinrany]

Relying on people to magically solve tragedy of the commons by themselves never works.