The Holidays are here, which means 2014 is drawing to a close. For Asuswrt-merlin, this has been another busy year. If I were a corporate type, I'd describe it as "a year of tremendous growth", and show colourful charts for the neckties around the table to nod at, while I add a few more buzzwords to wooh them. However all I have to go by are download counts on Mediafire (and these might be skewed by bots, spiders, etc...). The tendency indicates that the userbase keeps growing. The forum activity is another sign confirming it.
On the hardware front, 2014 saw the release of the RT-AC87U. Supporting this new model wasn't quite as difficult as when Asus introduced ARM-based models last year, but it still required a few weeks of work. I must once again thank Asus for kindly providing me with a development sample and early GPL code so I could have the firmware up and running in time for the product launch.
2014 for Asuswrt-merlin was 13 major releases, 8 bugfix minor releases and 6 public betas. That's a lot of releases in one year. My original plan of alternating bugfix and new feature releases eventually got ditched. Adding new features became increasingly difficult as my codebase was gradually diverting away from Asus's own codebase. At one point I had to refocus my goals for the project. I then decided that for the time being, I would no longer add any new feature (by feature I mean something really new, such as DNSFilter, not just adding a new configurable option here and there). So far it seems the userbase is ok with this, possibly because the crowd that's more interested in major new features tend to stick with DD-WRT or Tomato instead. And it allows me to still keep my code in-sync with new releases from Asus (albeit it's still at lot more work to merge and test it than it was two years ago).
2014 still saw the addition of DNSFilter and the switch to Samba 3.6. And with Asus constantly adding new features, people still do get new toys now and then to tinker with.
So what's in store for 2015? I don't know. I suspect this might see the release of the RT-AC3200, which I will possibly support (I cannot commit to it since I don't know yet if/when/how it will be possible). Asus are hinting at more new features coming from them in Asuswrt (and no, I don't really know anything more than you do, sorry). So for now my plan is simply to keep the course, merging new releases from Asus while providing my usual sprinkling of tweaks and fixes here and there. I wish I had some big surprise in store for the 376.50 milestone, but I don't. (ok maybe I do have something minor, as I'm working a dedicated website for the project, but it will mostly be just a dedicated place that will contain pretty much what's already on my personal website. It will mostly just give the project more of an identity on its own I guess.)
In closing, I'd like to take the occasion to wish everyone a great Holiday, and to thank everyone for their support with this project: the users here who take the time to answer questions, the few courageous enough to dive into the code and provide patches (especially pinwing and saintdev, my two IPv6 specialists), the people who donated through Paypal (I'm still amazed at the people's generosity there!), Asus for providing me with development hardware and answering my "where is that GPL?" emails, and finally Tim Higgins for providing us a place for us to share, discuss, support, argue and complain about this and that.
Have a great Holiday everyone!
On the hardware front, 2014 saw the release of the RT-AC87U. Supporting this new model wasn't quite as difficult as when Asus introduced ARM-based models last year, but it still required a few weeks of work. I must once again thank Asus for kindly providing me with a development sample and early GPL code so I could have the firmware up and running in time for the product launch.
2014 for Asuswrt-merlin was 13 major releases, 8 bugfix minor releases and 6 public betas. That's a lot of releases in one year. My original plan of alternating bugfix and new feature releases eventually got ditched. Adding new features became increasingly difficult as my codebase was gradually diverting away from Asus's own codebase. At one point I had to refocus my goals for the project. I then decided that for the time being, I would no longer add any new feature (by feature I mean something really new, such as DNSFilter, not just adding a new configurable option here and there). So far it seems the userbase is ok with this, possibly because the crowd that's more interested in major new features tend to stick with DD-WRT or Tomato instead. And it allows me to still keep my code in-sync with new releases from Asus (albeit it's still at lot more work to merge and test it than it was two years ago).
2014 still saw the addition of DNSFilter and the switch to Samba 3.6. And with Asus constantly adding new features, people still do get new toys now and then to tinker with.
So what's in store for 2015? I don't know. I suspect this might see the release of the RT-AC3200, which I will possibly support (I cannot commit to it since I don't know yet if/when/how it will be possible). Asus are hinting at more new features coming from them in Asuswrt (and no, I don't really know anything more than you do, sorry). So for now my plan is simply to keep the course, merging new releases from Asus while providing my usual sprinkling of tweaks and fixes here and there. I wish I had some big surprise in store for the 376.50 milestone, but I don't. (ok maybe I do have something minor, as I'm working a dedicated website for the project, but it will mostly be just a dedicated place that will contain pretty much what's already on my personal website. It will mostly just give the project more of an identity on its own I guess.)
In closing, I'd like to take the occasion to wish everyone a great Holiday, and to thank everyone for their support with this project: the users here who take the time to answer questions, the few courageous enough to dive into the code and provide patches (especially pinwing and saintdev, my two IPv6 specialists), the people who donated through Paypal (I'm still amazed at the people's generosity there!), Asus for providing me with development hardware and answering my "where is that GPL?" emails, and finally Tim Higgins for providing us a place for us to share, discuss, support, argue and complain about this and that.
Have a great Holiday everyone!
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