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A green light for free-software defined radio?A green light for free-software defined radio?Posted Jul 7, 2007 14:31 UTC (Sat) by pascal.martin (guest, #2995)In reply to: A green light for free-software defined radio? by shemminger Parent article: A green light for free-software defined radio?
> But there was also a negative ruling on SDR today:
This is actually the FCC ruling that the SFLC was responding to.
I found the SFLC reaction to be more marketing than substance. Having read the two texts, I believe they do a lot of spin about open source in general instead of analyzing the specifics of the problem. The LWN report seems more rounded (thank you).
I believe there are three main points that the SFLC is wrong about:
- the FCC ruling is not about open source software in general, it is about radio-related software and hardware documentation only. Therefore the FCC is not trying to regulate software, as the SFLC claims.
- the FCC ruling is not about open source software developers, it is about restricting access to hardware (i.e. no access to open radio hardware). The FCC wants to restrict the sale of devices that could be easily modified in a non-compliant way. If a device has public specs and can be reprogrammed, then the FCC will find it non-compliant. Without radio hardware, who care about radio software? In this context the conclusion "The rules allow FOSS developers not affiliated with device manufacturers to continue work on their software without restriction" qualifies as spin.
- The new ruling makes it clear that the burden is on the vendor to prove that the device cannot be so modified. Vendors now have a strong incentive not to give access to firmware update. Those who still want to keep their radio open will be required to provide a binary-only driver an not release hardware specs.
The SFLC actually confuses cryptography code reviews and open access. An open source cryptographic code does not allow people to break a cryptographic-based firmware lock: you need access to the keys, not to the code. Don't they have a competent developer to advise them?.
The GPL v3 makes the problem even more problematic, especially with SDR spreading into personal uses (high speed wireless networks).
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A green light for free-software defined radio? Posted Jul 7, 2007 18:26 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well this is specificly about _software_radio_. Not software to control radios... software as the radio.
They are a bit like Winmodems or software modems. Were you strip out the hardware that did all the work on previous devices and replace it all with software. The hardware that is used it used is kept to a absolute minimum. All the frequency generation, modulation, and other such things are done purely in software.
Sure this uses a lot of CPU, but going this direction has SIGNIFICANT advantages. You can do things with software radios that you simply can not do with regular radio hardware, at least unless your spending a shitload of money.
The Intel wireless devices and other things are essentionally software radios also.
Going back to software modems vs hardware modems. Sure software modems are cheap and crappy and other such things. But what people didn't realise at the time is that once you had the control of the hardware and software you could easily update the protocols the devices supported and changed their behavior so that software modems can be made to significantly out perform contemporary, and much more expensive, 'real' modems. Back when I played Quake2 I could get significantly better internet performance (better bandwidth and better latencies) using a software modem then I could with a hardware modem. And it didn't have anything to do with the hardware modem being crappy or anything like that. (although the phone line was pretty crappy) The difference was that I could change and update the protocols the software modem supported simply by updating my drivers, with the hardware modem I was stuck using older protocols that were less effective.
Software radio is like this, but it's much much more important.
Look at the stuff already being used by GNU Radio software and hardware:
Capture HDTV broadcasts. Detect wifi hotspots. Track people using Cell phones, satellite communications, magnetic signal proccessing, wireless communications, video transimission and reception, audio transmission and reception. Anything people can use a radio for. All with similar hardware and similar software. It's very flexible.
The cost of providing similar functionality in hardware would be outrageous. Software radio is a important foundation for tommorrow's communications.
The future of communication is through global wireless mesh network. All of it ad-hoc, completely open, nearly completely free. Almost organic in nature. All of it working together, satelite, wide-ranging wifi, small time radio operators, high speed/high reliable commercial wired communications etc etc.
The radio spectrum is a literally untapped shared resource for sharing and communicating on a global scale. Right now you have all major governments admitting that this is a resource that belongs to it's citizens. AND you have ALL major governments that have near total restrictions on what those citizens can and cannot do with it.
The key to openning up and making it work is highly sophisticated, open, and cheap radios. Much more sophisticated and open then what we have now. In order to make this affordable for the average person it needs to be software radios. .
Your already seeing this with Intel Wifi, for example. Or Atheros. Pretty much any significant consumer device will be software-based.
Needless to say there are significant advantages for people that have influence over the FCC to keep radio from openning up. For very significant censorship and financial reasons.... FCC doesn't want to lose it's power, the government does not want to lose control of it's regulation of speech, and big media companies do not want to lose control over their monopoly of of the airwaves, etc etc
Look at the tiny amount of open spectrum we have to work with, and look at the massive amout of usefullness and value people are already able to extract from this very crowded and very limited resource.
A green light for free-software defined radio? Posted Jul 8, 2007 1:37 UTC (Sun) by pascal.martin (guest, #2995) [Link] I certainly do not want to badmouth SDR. The army invented them for good reasons, and the future sounds very exciting.
My whole point is that the FCC does not want modifiable 100% open source software: either the software is locked on the device or else the driver is not open source and the hardware spec is not public.
Either case, open source developers are left out.
I know about GNU radio. For the time being this is hobbyist equipment. Volume distribution could be well declared illegal by the FCC. This is the message being sent out.
A green light for free-software defined radio? Posted Jul 8, 2007 17:36 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I know..
It's just the whole thing pisses me off.
What sort of sense does it make to have a non-elected government body have massive amount of control over...
the design and manufacture of so many devices,
It's completely absurd. FCC and government regulation and control is doing a massive amount of damage to innovation and the ability for people to communicate freely with one another.
I don't mind having orginization to help set standards, do proper regulation so that inviduals and companies can't abuse the spectrum and hurt everybody else's ability to use it... but right now we have regulations over the use of radio that are 70 years obsolete and were dubious in the first place!
A green light for free-software defined radio? Posted Jul 12, 2007 17:14 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] > The radio spectrum is a literally untapped shared resource for sharing and> communicating on a global scale. Right now you have all major governments > admitting that this is a resource that belongs to it's citizens. AND you > have ALL major governments that have near total restrictions on what those > citizens can and cannot do with it.
The issue is that it is a shared resource.. and ideally the government is there to make sure that it does not suffer from the "Tragedy of the Commons". The problems range from the officially malicious (purposely listening on/blocking other transmitters) to the accidently malicious... two different transmitters using the same frequency with different patterns causing blockage etc.
The issue is how to best police the commons. Each government has come up with its own way.. and most are probably not the most democratic. Getting that fixed requires fixing a government to be accountable by its citizens which requires a participating citizen base... something most nations do not have.
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