Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Thu, 06 Jan 2005 16:39:56 -0500 | | From | Jim Nelson <> | | Subject | Re: Open hardware wireless cards |
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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/
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