[tedm]

For starters the Sony thing would be thrown out of court today. Wikipedia is your friend:

"In April 2018, the Federal Trade Commission sent notice to six automobile, consumer electronics, and video game console manufacturers, later revealed through a Freedom of Information Act request to be Hyundai, Asus, HTC, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo,[39] stating that their warranty practices may violate the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. The FTC specifically identified that informing consumers that warranties are voided if they break a warranty sticker or seal on the unit's packaging, use third-party replacement parts, or use third-party repair services is a deceptive practice, as these terms are only valid if the manufacturer provides free warranty service or replacement parts.[40] BOTH SONY AND NINTENDO released updated warranty statements following this notice.[41]"

In 2018 an exemption was inserted into the DMCA that basically prohibits manufacturers from using that to prevent consumers from maintaining and repairing consumer electronic goods. The DMCA was the principle device used by makers to prevent people from breaking into their boxes.

On July 9, 2021, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14036, "Promoting Competition in the American Economy", a sweeping array of initiatives across the executive branch. Among them included instructions to the FTC to craft rules to prevent manufacturers from preventing repairs performed by owners or independent repair shops.[51][52] About two weeks after the EO was issued, the FTC make a unanimous vote to enforce the right to repair as policy and will look to take action against companies that limit the type of repair work that can be done at independent repair shops.[53]

Please note that all of this explicitly covers SOFTWARE repairs as even these politicians recognize that devices today are amalgamations of software and hardware.

The RtR movement is very powerful today and supported by many politicians. The main players who are fighting it are Apple and they know they are fighting a losing battle. In the United States, administrative rule changes have pretty much destroyed the ability of manufacturers to sue people who publish instructions on how to break into security of devices in order to load alternative firmware if those instructions are framed as "repair" instructions. (which is quite easy to do)

Please avoid spreading FUD when so much of this information is so easy to look up.

As to the original question:

" a few others be forced to make a developer kits so that the dd-wrt developers can get their firmware working on these SOHO routers?"

The reason dd-wrt doesn't support some of these devices isn't because it can't. It's because it would take effort to integrate them in some cases a LOT of effort. BUT, the dd-wrt source is out there and people HAVE ported it to devices (like the WNDR3400 version 2 and 3 devices) that were never subsequently folded into dd-wrt. There are also other wrt projects out there that support some routers that dd-wrt does not. (like some Marvell devices)

The devices that generally hide development kits or don't make them with decent Linux drivers are often the ones OEMED to the major ISP's like Comcast, ATT, etc. that is cable and DSL modems from Arris, Technicolor, etc. And if you check the fine print on these agreements, all of them are either RENTED or they are handed out to customers FOR FREE but in the fine print the ISP retains ownership.

So since the end user cannot "own" their "free DSL modem" or whatever, because the Telco technically retains ownership of it - they cannot invoke RtR.

And that makes a lot of sense if you think about it - because if you are a SoC vendor producing an inferior product, you aren't going to interest companies like Netgear to buy your SoC. But, if you close-source and make only available the dev kit to people under lots of contracts then you will be chosen by companies like Arris and Motorola and Technicolor who want to make products that are attractive to companies who also want to shut-out the consumer - specifically, Telco ISPs. To those companies, it's more important to put a device in the consumer's home that the consumer can be prevented from effing with than to put a device in a consumer's home that actually works well.

[Gameman Advanced Kid]

[kernel-panic69]

Not that I am aware of. I generally bypass using the setup wizard aka netgear genie and do everything manually. Sometimes, I don't even have the WAN connected until I am done doing everything else.

[feliciano]

[kernel-panic69]

The problem with certain hardware (Broadcom, specifically) is that the newer hardware drivers are released as pre-compiled object files, which limits you to using the kernel released in the GPL tarball to some degree. I believe that the 802.11ax Broadcoms are now using a 4.x kernel vs. a 2.6 (I would have to check RMerlin's repos). To get everything a developer would need, it's a whole lot of hassle, and Broadcom is not very forthcoming. As we all know, Marvell driver support is pretty much a dead end for the most part, save and except what is included in newer kernel releases, but the specific code required for routers is probably lacking.

Apparently, some people do not quite understand the premise of the Sony or Xbox cases and why they were upheld.