Unfortunately each of the developers working on it are being required to sign
an NDA so it isn't possible for others to help. I think we are OK in this
regard anyway. There are a few people who signed up to help. If you really
want to help though I'll put you in touch with Luis @ Atheros. Just send me
an email.
As far as what it entails I'm not 100% sure. I was wondering that myself
although didn't really care enough to ask. Nor did I sign the NDA. It is
irrelevant to my involvement. Luis R. Rodriguez is the developer at Qualcomm
Atheros who has been advocating for it internally. He has also worked on the
AR9170 driver/firmware although hasn't had the time to do the clean up
himself.
He did a presentation at Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 2012 you might
be interested. You can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P-r3H0bY8c
I'd like to get the ath3k code released as well for the AR3011/AR3012
Bluetooth chipsets. These are used on Wifi/Bluetooth Mini PCIe Combo Cards.
Humorously all the combo cards half a free software chipset for one or the
other although not both. Fortunately I think we can solve this because the
one is Atheros/Atheros and while the one is dependent on non-free firmware
the company has been very good about releasing the source code for other
chipsets (AR9170, AR9271, & AR7010). Not to mention all of the Atheros mini
pcie 802.11n chipsets (although this is due to there not being non-free
firmware).
I haven't talked to Luis about the ath3k firmware although if we can get
legal and everybody to OK it I'd like to solve that issue and remove one more
proprietary barrier. Right now we offer a USB bluetooth dongle with a CSR
chipset that is free software friendly as a temporary solution.
