On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 06:39:35PM +0200, Mihai Popescu wrote: > So, do users want wifi good support in OpenBSD badly enough to pay for it?
Some people and companies are already doing that. Their priorities do not necesarily line up with everyone else's. And I also have an adult life, with two small kids, and other projects I need to work on. The more responsibilities one has in life, the less time is available, so the less voluntary work one can afford to do. I'd rather like to see additional contributors, to be honest. The load can be shared. This is the whole point of an open source project. The goal should be to grow more experts, not to put more and more load on existing experts which then burn out. I started out by fixing some bugs and then reading a big book (Wireless LANs from Heise Group) before adding bigger features to the wifi stack. Hopefully, others can do the same. > >What's cool about USB athn though is that the firmware we use is open source. > >In theory, anyone could fix anything in the firmware and driver. > > I remember a guy from openwrt telling anything Qualcomm related is > closed and they are not able to provide any documentation since all is > wrapped in legal contracts nobody wants to break. He said he thinks > they will not be ever able to provide free docs because of lawyers. USB/athn is ath9k, which pre-dates the acquisition of atheros by qualcomm.
