On Wed, 2003-06-11 at 10:07, Ken Restivo wrote: > > The posting about SDR and gnuradio got me to thinking about this. > The manufacturers of closed, proprietary software-controlled WiFi > chips (Broadcom, Atheros, others) claim that at least *some* of > their code must remain proprietary and binary-only "to comply with > FCC regulations". > > [snip] > > Given all that, are these WiFi chipmakers acting in good faith? > Is the FCC *really* pressuring them so intensely, to keep tight > control of their firmware? Or is it an excuse? Is it simply greed? > Or is it another example of technology-changes-much-faster-than- > legislation? Or are there other issues at play here (i.e. liability > exposure, historical issues, etc.) of which I am ignorant?
I had an opportunity to review the programming documentation for one of the new breed of "proprietary software-controlled WiFi chips" and it was pretty clear that access to portions of the source code and/or programming documentation would allow someone to take the device way out of spec in terms of at least frequency, power, spectral density and MAC timing. The devices I examined in detail also had absolutely delicious interfaces that the vendor(s) would likely want to keep out of the hands of competition. In my opinion, the more openly available interfaces are light-years behind. That's all I can or will say on the above topic. As a recently unemployed senior-level software expert in this and other areas, I am now available for hire. Please contact me offline if interested. Seth Zirin [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
