Well put, Lamar. I just wanted to add a few things. I've worked with the SDR Forum for a while now, so I decided to ask them about the concerns raised on this discussion board.
First, to the IP, they are not trying to take IP rights away from the inventors. Their intent is to reserve the right to publish the work. This is basically the same as the copyright transfer we always give when publishing papers for IEEE or to the SDR Forum Technical Conference. They have recognized problems with the wording, as raised by a number of people directly involved with the competition, and are right now waiting for the new wording to clear this up. The SDRF is a non-profit organization and has no interest in holding IP of this sort. The competition is meant to allow students to get hands-on work with SDRs, techniques, and tools. The corporate sponsors have agreed to provide some tools and equipment to facilitate this process. I understand the concerns with the corporate sponsorship, but again, they do not receive the IP created. They are mostly interested in building familiarity with their products, getting their names out to the community for future development, and hopefully build loyalty to their products. Without these tools made available to the competitors, it wouldn't really fly. Unfortunately, most people do not look at the GNU Radio right now as a professional tool whereas MATLAB is, not to mention the fact that MATLAB is a simple CD installation, and I think all of the "Can't get gnuradio-core to compile" emails on this listserv prove the difficulty in working with this project. As someone who has taught communications classes (and used the GNU Radio for in-class demonstrations!), I can tell you that most electrical engineers in communications are not comfortable with programming, which I am highly critical of as the future of communications is in software. That aside, many of them are uncomfortable working in MATLAB in a Windows environment. When I tell my students that they will have to program in this class, I loose a number of them, and the rest groan. I can't imagine what would happen if I told them they had to install Linux and the GNU Radio code if they wanted to work on this stuff at home! Bottom line, I love the GNU Radio project, but the world of SDR has a long way to go. It started mostly, and still is largely, with military money. We are just now seeing it as a commercial and hobbyist possibility. That means that much of the work comes from the military and the big contractors. Getting more students involved is nothing short of a good thing. If the GNU Radio community wants to get involved, too, I think everyone would be happy. This is about the future of SDR and communications, and I for one would like to see as many students get their hands on this stuff as possible and provide the necessary cooperation and competition to push it to new heights. Thanks, and I'll get rid of my soapbox now. Tom Rondeau Virginia Tech -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lamar Owen Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 6:16 PM To: John Gilmore; [email protected] Subject: RE: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition [You know, I might get flamed for this, but here goes....] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of John Gilmore >It looks like an incredible amount of work, under really picky and >idiotic rules, solving problems so challenging that there *isn't* any >commercial gear that does it, at any price. For an unknown and >probably tiny reward. And to hand it all over to somebody else to >own!!! Looking over the rules, FAQ, and phases, this looks pretty normal, having dealt with engineering academia before (for PARI, and during my own senior year 17 years ago). The purpose of these challenges is education of the students in practices found in the industry. Whether those practices are correct or not is not even relevant, as industry practices are what they are. The student is getting the use of the development tools of the sponsors for free during the scope of the challenge; it is an extremely good educational opportunity from the educational point of view, and provides valuable people networking for the students involved. This sort of challenge mirrors the processes by which industrial electrical engineering is actually done, not how we (myself included) wishes it were done. The rules and projects are ordinary in terms of actually engineering industry practice, in my experience. Reading through the sample challenges, and understanding that Matlab, Simulink, and all of Xilinx's tools will be made available, I don't see any of the challenges that would be too difficult for a team of bright engineering juniors and seniors. To give you an example, here at PARI we just finished a two semester mechanical engineering project with NC A&T University. In one year, the students developed programs, techniques, skills, and processes to measure, model, and change the balance of our 26 meter radio telescopes, each of which weight over 300 tons. The one is bottom heavy, and the other top heavy. For obvious reasons they began with the bottom heavy dish, and measured torques, calculated moments, centers of mass, and weights, and then recommended not only how much weight to remove, but the ideal (using finite element analysis) weights to remove. The upper axis had 2,200 pounds of lead counterweight removed, and the lower axis around 6,000 pounds. Oh, and the students had to design the fixtures to remove the weights, and actually help remove weights. There were five students, and they completed all of the modelling and 50% of the physical work (they hadn't counted on rust, for instance, on the three inch bolts (not length; diameter!) holding the weights to the structure). But the bottom heavy dish is now much less bottom heavy (we wanted to keep it stable, and not try to perfectly balance it; but they could have made the balance perfect). A team of five students can accomplish amazing things. >(They won't accept work that has been released under a public license, >such as the GPL or even the BSD license. If you spend two years >writing this stuff, they will *own* it at the end, and you won't even >be able to keep working with or evolving your own software or >hardware. And you won't be paid for any of this.) And just what is wrong with any of this? The sponsors provide tools; the students use them for no charge, and get recognition, valuable experience, and a great time. That is, unless you want a blob of Matlab/Simulink/Xilinx-centric code running around that requires those tools. The scoring is weighted towards those solutions that use the sponsors' products (this is normal industry practice, too; put up the money, and you make the rules). You know, if the GNUradio Project wanted to sponsor such a contest and provide USRP's for each team, then the GNUradio project can set the rules of license. I would love seeing that, actually. By the way, I personally own two USRP's; our technical director owns one; and PARI owns four. So I certainly believe in what the GNUradio project is about; but seeing an antagonistic attitutde towards a normal educational senior project baffles me. If we are going to change engineering practice, we have to get students using the tools. To get them using the tools incentives have to be provided. Although, there are quite a few students using the GNUradio toolkit already. Not directed at John, but to Al: none of these students or their faculty deserve the epithet 'suckers.' -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 www.pari.edu _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
