FOSS for amateur radio

Not specifically mentioned but relied upon by many of the fine projects listed is Hamlib. Due to time constraints I have moved away from patch integration and such which has been ably taken over by Mike, W9MDB. I do handle releases and we just released Hamlib 4.3.1 earlier this week.

Truly, it's kind of hard to grasp that I've been with the project for over 20 years! The project itself was started by Frank Singleton, VK3FCS, in July 2000 and shortly thereafter Stephane Fillod, F8CFE, joined the project who did much development work in the early days. Hamlib is the result of many contributors around the globe. While not nearly to the scale of the Linux kernel, in fact there has been very little vendor support except for publicly available documentation (in fact many polite requests for additional information have been quietly ignored and in other cases have been outright refused while proprietary projects appear to receive such documentation), the collaborative ethos put in place by the kernel project has been a successful model for Hamlib, thanks to many hams willing to tinker with their radios.

Another project that scratches another itch of mine is Tlf, a contest logger. No, it is not at the level of N1MM, but it does boast some impressive capability that I learned a bit more about by recently editing its manual page. Tom, DL1JBE is the Tlf project lead. Work continues in an effort to allow Tlf to be used for more events--ham radio contest organizers are certainly inventive, especially state QSO parties! More users and more contributors are always welcome.

The email Linus sent just over 30 years ago may have seemed almost an afterthought at the time. Over the three decades since the shock wave it created continues to reverberate throughout the computing landscape. As important as the Linux kernel is technically, Linus also showed us the way toward collaborative development. The bazaar, indeed.