From: Norbert van Nobelen <Norbert@edusupport.nl>
Organization: EduSupport
To: Jim Nelson <james4765@cwazy.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Open hardware wireless cards
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 22:42:54 +0100
User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2
References: <20050105200526.GL5159@ruslug.rutgers.edu> <1105045205.15823.4.camel@krustophenia.net> <41DDB02C.1030205@cwazy.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <41DDB02C.1030205@cwazy.co.uk>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Type: text/plain;
  charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-Id: <200501062242.54616.Norbert@edusupport.nl>
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 1502
Lines: 33

It is an excuse:
The hardware is not capable of more output than the legal limit. The external 
antenna is an illegal addition, which has nothing to do with opensource. It 
is a pretty easy mod.

On Thursday 06 January 2005 22:39, you wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> > On Thu, 2005-01-06 at 20:32 +0100, Norbert van Nobelen wrote:
> >>100mWatt antenna (-: Gives 4 mile range (-:
> >>Make it USB powered (-: (so that the pcmcia card does not overheat!!)
> >
> > Ah, this reminds me, isn't there some kind of issue with open source
> > wireless and FCC (or whatever your local equivalent is) regulations?  Or
> > was that just an excuse the vendors used for their closed source
> > drivers?
> >
> > Lee
>
> A little of both, methinks.  Most vendors build their hardware to the most
> powerful that any law (or engineering limits) will allow.  They then use
> country-specific drivers to keep tha hardware operating within legal
> limits.
>
> Open-source drivers would make it trivial to make the hardware operate
> beyond its legal limits - and could potentially land them in trouble with
> the FCC/whatever. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that there hasn't been a case
> of open-source wireless drivers tweaked beyond the legal limits landing
> someone with a fine.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/