On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 10:11:32PM -0700, Ken Restivo wrote: > Worse, the FCC-regulations excuse is, IMHO, highly dubious. It is *so > easy* to generate interference; you can generate huge swaths of highly > illegal interference with $1.50 worth of off-the-shelf components, like > PLL's or even Schmitt triggers. In fact, anything that can be made to > oscillate at RF speeds, is a potential interference-generator.
Right, but nobody is going to accidentally put together an interference generator. Already, people are doing it with open source and 802.11. Just for instance, lot of people think that it is a pretty good idea to turn their Prism cards up to 11, and it's EASY to do with Linux. > I can only guess that either the FCC needs to lighten > up a bit, or, the manufacturers need to stop hiding behind the FCC in > order to acheive their nefarious lock-the-customer-in ends. The FCC has lightened up. If you certify under SDR rules, the FCC relaxes the requirements for getting your device re-approved after software mods, provided that end-users cannot modify the software at will. Maybe Atheros and Broadcom think that this is an attractive feature for their customers, more attractive than open-source drivers. I guess that it could hasten product releases and updates. Soon we will see low-cost a/b/g radio chipsets from Taiwan. The Taiwanese makers have been pretty good about leaking datasheets to open-source that describe all the precious little knobs and dials for tuning and Tx power control, the stuff that the Atheros Hardware Abstraction Layer conceals. So ultimately there will be "purely" open-source a/b/g drivers. Dave -- David Young OJC Technologies [EMAIL PROTECTED] Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933 -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
