Need help to write a new driver for a new wireless device (not yet in the market).

[Daniel Rose]

Darryl Smith wrote:
> Hello All,
> 

<SNIP> (no offence!)

> 
> What I am saying is that there is a case for closed source wireless drivers.
> There is also a case for open source drivers. But to say that a person
> should not be helped because the drivers will be closed source. Well, that
> is short sighted. After all, how are you then going to reverse engineer the
> driver to do cool stuff :-)
> 
I agree. I see the problem, I think.  We can't lock the legally compliant code into hardware because firmware updates are a good thing and we don't want to lose that capability.  You could put code in hardware to handle all the different national rules, and allow the driver to select the nation, but that's irrelevant.

It sounds like a murky area; a user can select the wrong country and be in breach of the technical requirements, can't they?

In any case, I agree that selling open radio comms hardware that allows the users to do all sorts of things could be bad on a large scale, but I'd assume that the hardware required can still be sourced anyway by those keen enough to get it, or make it themselves.  I saw some neat plans a while ago for a radio receiver that generates an EM field, used as an antenna.  It essentially harvests the power from the local radio signal, giving the owner a (dangerous) net power gain, at the cost of a resulting radio shadow over some significant area behind the rig, so people so like to mess with this stuff and I see why we don't want spectrum trashed with all kinds of stuff, whatever the specific licencing of the spectrum or the software.