Bi-weekly OpenMoko community update

[Robin Paulson]

On 15/10/2007, Jay Vaughan <jayv at synth.net> wrote:
> >
> > so no, we do want and require the source code to everything
> >
>
> Change your government then.  In the US for example, there are strict
> FCC-imposed regulations on how open certain portions of the carrier
> network can be, and this extends to the chip-level in consumer
> handsets.  These regulations are enforced in the States, but also
> imposed internationally as well.. and yes, before you don the tin-
> foil hat, they're designed to protect the ability for law enforcement
> to protect the network, as well as intrude on it.  A fully open
> carrier layer would impede this, and there is doctrine in many
> western governments to protect the sandbox.  This carries down all
> the way to the individual implementors (chip mfr's), and at some
> point, you can expect a brick wall.  Naivity is no excuse; government
> also.

unfortunately, you chopped out the bit of my reply that said '(where
legal)', which was specifically put in for the case you mention, i.e.
the firmware for the gsm unit.

on the other hand, we were specifically talking about the driver for
the gps hardware, which is a receive only radio, and hence not covered
by the same regulations as the gsm radio