It is funny... I get the feeling that they still give this response, because everyone who's gotten it doesn't know how to respond, it's so obviously wrong.

They use a lot of open source software and make firmware updates and controller software readily available, so how could they not know that

* The GPL's legal requirements come before your products needs, your users security or whatever. If you can't use GPL'd software, then don't.

* open source software has always proven to be more secure, because relatively serious and obvious security bugs linger in closed source software for a long time. How can we know that your closed source software is better than history suggests (unless you release the source...)

ridiculous. I kinda hope some of their engineers notice this on HN and can use evidence of "public" (engineer) sentiment to pressure the management