Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 01:08:04 -0700 From: Mauro <mcepeda@ualberta.ca> To: Peter Grehan <grehan@freebsd.org> Cc: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: airport estreme with Freebsd Message-ID: <1107418085.4125.27.camel@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <4201C54A.8090009@freebsd.org> References: <1106542417.29481.168.camel@localhost.localdomain> <41F4ADC1.8070201@freebsd.org> <42017276.1010304@finnovative.net> <4201C54A.8090009@freebsd.org>
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I don't buy the theory about government frequencies. This theory asks one to believe that government frequencies are not intercepted or tampered with in some fashion. They are tampered with and can be done so easily. Legally sold scanners enable one to listen in to all sorts of private signals. Also, mundane Radio shack parts apparently will allow the techy in the know to manipulate government frequencies. The idea that they keep their specs in the dark because an insignificant number of geeks might want to fool around with government frequencies is not sound because these are not numbers to worry about, and because it's not as if broadcom would be setting a precedence enabling the manipulation of government frequencies by the public. The concept of broadcom not releasing specs because they do not want to "step on government toes" is also problematic because it is ethnocentric. It assumes that these set of frequencies are illegal in all localities where wireless is sold (globally). Although I have not studied it, this is probably not so. The one about having competitive edge makes sense. Especially considering the history, one of refusal to co-operate I'm told, that broadcom towards free/open source movements. This a propietary linux driver for airport extreme: http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz As for an opensource project for airport extreme, its here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-bcom4301/ I have to say, link such as this one: http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/misc/0307/msg00808.html suggest that some people do have airport extreme working, contrary to common opinion. On a related note, I found this: "http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-bcom4301/ Now the above link is working towards a driver that willl be portable to various archs. And they do have access to the specs of airport extreme by way of an unnamed company. The problem is that these devs are obligated to not divulge publically. That's why it is going slow. It is interesting to note that their site mentions, to the best of my recollection and presumably prior to getting access to specs, that they hope some company will feel obligated by gpl to make the specs public or co-operate with open/free source devs (I'm paraphrasing). What I understand from this is that airport extreme uses open/free source code in their driver. Thus, if this is true, in my opinion braodcom is violating gpl license because gpl obligates them to make public the source. The only exception to the above rule is if broadcom were not to distribute the driver they could keep the source (and changes) to themselves. But since drivers for airport extreme hardware (a broadcom product) are distributed with OSs, the drivers should be opened up (again my interpretation of gpl). Perhaps, broadcom's refusal to co-operate with the public directly is their legal attempt around this. They dump the responcibility of providing drivers for their hardware to apple (as per an email I have from them). They basically told me, your want drivers, get them from apple. Yeah right, as if apple is going to distribute linux drivers! Shows how stubborn and how commited they are to their refusal to co-operate with free source (idiots in my book). Apple's whole reason behind broadcom and the odd connector is obviously to limit interoperablity. Ergo, it's an attempt to lock their hardware customers to their bloated and slow OS (or at least this is how I feel being an owner of a 2004 ibook with airport extreme). I give broadcom two fingers up, three if you count ..." On Thu, 2005-03-02 at 16:31 +1000, Peter Grehan wrote: > > This has been an outstanding issue on all platforms including Linux. I > > read about this in Linux Unwired. My take on it is that Broadcom feels > > that they have a competitive advantage, and documenting their stuff, > > would compromise that advantage. That's only a theory from discussions > > with my UNIX Admin buddies. :-) > > That's one theory, and another is that the WiFi manufacturers don't > want to allow hackers to modify radio power settings or they'll > lose their FCC licenses for the product. > > later, > > Peter. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-ppc > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-ppc-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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