On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 10:01:12AM +0100, Timo Sch?ler wrote:
> maybe this is an interesting article/overview?
> 
> http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/11/01/2321205.shtml? 
> tid=122&tid=137&tid=17

I'm tired, but here are my scattered remarks about the firmware
licensing.

First, I'm glad that two vendors have freed their firmware for
redistribution.

I doubt any vendor will release their firmware source code under an open
source license.  Too bad.

It is valuable to have the programming specs for the MAC microcontrollers,
even apart from the firmware source code: what's stopping you from writing
an original, open-source firmware that implements the 802.11 MAC, or even
some other MAC?  There would be considerable interest and support for that
project from university wireless researchers (who have craved a versatile
MAC for a long time), GNU Radio experimenters (www.gnuradio.org),
and community wireless network-builders.  The MAC on two of the
chipsets in question, Atmel's and TI's, is an ARM microcontroller, so
it seems to me you could write the MAC in C, once, "port" it to both
the microcontrollers, and compile with the GNU toolchain.  I think that
it would be worthwhile to seek the programming specs in addition to the
redistribution rights.

(Incidentally, we already have register-set definitions for one of the
ancillary chips that the Atmel appears with, the RFMD RF3000, in the
NetBSD tree.)

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933