From: "Alan Cox" <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, 2010/September/10 01:25
>> > I wonder what changed to cause Broadcom to change tune. Broadcom
>> > seemed
>> > to think that their secret sauce was oh so important to keep secret.
>> >
>> > -wolfgang
>>
>> I think the reason was that the driver would expose information
>> about the inner design of their chipset, which they felt might
>> compromise the secrecy of product design advantages (or perhaps
>> disadvantages).
>
> Broadcom have been helpful in other areas.
>
> Wireless has been particularly problematic for many vendors for a long
> time because the US regulations require wireless devices are not user
> tamperable. This leads to questions like "what does that mean if it's open
> source and you can set an unapproved frequency or power by hacking the
> code"
>
> The penalties for getting that wrong are rather high. Some vendors have
> done things like alternate firmware which does the sanity checks on card.
> I've no idea what actually drove the Broadcom decision and how they've
> actually addressed it, but for wireless manufacturers the open-sourcing
> decisions have been a good deal more complicated than simple "secret
> sauce" type arguments.
Which is particularly annoying to me because I hold a license that allows
me to use this sort of capabilities in one specific band that is within
the capabilities of the typical wireless chips. I can also use serious
power if I wish.
{^_-}
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