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Educated guessEducated guessPosted Dec 16, 2005 12:18 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Quanta Building MIT's $100 Laptops (eWeek) by khim Parent article: Quanta Building MIT's $100 Laptops (eWeek) I think that the legal issues facing wi-fi are as follows: 802.11g establishes a range of frequencies and mechanisms for hopping between them, in order to avoid any resonances or dampings and find working frequencies in any environment. The range of frequencies varies from country to country: US, Japan, maybe even within Europe. The cheap solution is to have one chip and change the range of frequencies in software (in this case, firmware). If you have access to their sources, you can reprogram the chip to go outside the range of legal frequencies. Probably not a big deal; but companies may face liabilities. A good, expensive solution would be to have different versions of the chip for the different markets. Another one might be to limit yourself to a range of frequencies which is common to all countries (the intersection between all ranges); I don't know if this is at all possible. So probably Intel and Ralink are doing one of these things, and their chips can be safely controlled in free software. This is all an educated guess. Can anyone add a more knowledgeable opinion?
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Educated guess Posted Dec 16, 2005 14:20 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Essintionally correct. Just one change: noone ever goes via "different hardware for different countries" route- unless difference in frequency is so big they need to redesign high-frequency part (like GSM 1800 vs GSM 1900). But if adapter is not extremally cheap they just put flash on card and store firmware there - so no need to keep firmware in driver. What I can not uderstood is why this is such a big deal. Non-free firmware is always in your system: in your WiFi card, in your CD-ROM, in your HDD, etc. And it's not a big deal for Debian creators. Why is it such a big deal if it's on CD in and not on chip then ?
Educated guess Posted Dec 16, 2005 17:41 UTC (Fri) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link] Distribution, obviously. Debian doesn't distribute the firmware in your HDD or DVD drive, but it does have to distribute non-free binary blobs.
Educated guess Posted Dec 17, 2005 12:51 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Yeah, it is copyrighted material: we would be at the mercy of the vendor, who might limit distribution if it wanted e.g. to sell new wireless adapters at any point in the future.
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