'Economist' Calls For Open WiFi Specs

DavidNWelton writes "An interesting and well thought-out call for Wifi manufacturers to open up their specs, at least partially, written by The Economist. 'So it is hard to see what the problem is beyond a dog-in-the-mangerish desire not to give anything away. Time to open it up, boys.'"

Comments

Re:don't make no sense

[Vo0k]

2. the companies in question have some lame policies

All of them. No "competition".

Re:don't make no sense

[JeremyALogan]

The FCC doesn't have any say, what-so-ever, over this. You could start a company tomorrow making cards that'll transmit on any frequency and even if they don't like it there's nothing they can do. Now, that being said, if I were to purchase one of your cards and start illegally broadcasting on restricted frequencies then they're free to nail my ass to the wall because I have then broken the law.

If you don't believe me then how about this... anyone (in the United States, at least) can buy a ham radio that'll broadcast on all types of frequencies that the general public isn't allowed to use. And yes... there are "computer controlled" ones.

I really hate seing people use this excuse to protect the companies when it really has no merit.

one word support

[Anonymous Coward]

One word, "support".
if manufactures openly release information necessary for interoperability regardless of what we (as geeks) think customers will expect support.
Manufactures already (often) take a anti-linux stance if linux drivers are produced, simple becuase they do not want to support there product via someone else implimentation of it.
If I use a freely developed driver etc I know that the manufacture should not be expected to support anything other than the hardware, we need to build this a global view that the public takes as common sense/granted

Re:In other news, pot calls kettle black

[iworm]

You are factually correct but very unfair. I quote from The Economist:

Why is it anonymous? Many hands write The Economist, but it speaks with a collective voice. Leaders are discussed, often disputed, each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited. The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it. As Geoffrey Crowther, editor from 1938 to 1956, put it, anonymity keeps the editor "not the master but the servant of something far greater than himself. You can call that ancestor-worship if you wish, but it gives to the paper an astonishing momentum of thought and principle."

Is there ANY 802.11x card that is open

[jonwil]

Is there any 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi LAN card (either PCI or PCMCIA, not something built into a motherboard) out there that is truely Open?
I dont mean some driver someone has figured out by reverse engineering, I mean a card where the manufacturer has released the specs and/or the driver code.

What I want to see is for someone to build a PC with all the features one would expect for a decent linux setup using only hardware components where either any driver code required to access the full features of the device is released by the company (firmware that runs from a ROM chip and/or that runs on a seperate CPU on the card doesnt need to be open for the hardware to qualify) or alternativly, enough specifications are released to enable someone to completly re-create said drivers.
It should have (in addition to the regular hardware features):
802.11 Wireless WiFi lan
CD/DVD burner
10/100 ethernet (most motherboards include this anyway these days)
Video Capture Card that has inputs for all the common standards (including the standards used for High Definition Digital cable/sattelite/free-to-air). Does anyone make a high definition capable capture card that supports that CableCard stuff? If so, that would fit perfectly here. If not, there is almost certainly a market for such a thing from those making PVR boxes.

Such a system (even just a list of bits to buy to pull it off would be nice) or systems (e.g. one for PVR use with the video capture card and one for use as a desktop without the extra bits) would be a great thing IMO.
Related to this, a list of companies and/or products that support open operating systems in various ways.
Each product would have one of these designations:
Totally closed, doesnt run on linux at all
Runs on linux only though closed binary driver (e.g. nvidia gfx stuff)
Reverse Engineered open driver exists for the hardware.
official company written open driver exists (the companies and hardware with this designation would be the ones that open-source people could then patronise)

Re:I want it, so give it to me you meeny!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, every single WiFi gadget I had to configure had a drop down to allow me to select the allowed frequencies by country - Netgear AP and NIC (with their own configurator), one in a Dell laptop (right there in Windows) - although I can't remember on my mac.
So that one's a load of crap.
As far as the power argument goes, it seems to me that what gets regulated in the end is the max power in the spec. If some moron boost his, that would be a problem allright, but then again I didn't hear of anybody coming down hard on replacement antennas.
So that one doesn't smell too good either.

Closed drivers should work if they won't open them

[hazee]

When the manufacturers refuse to open up the specs for their hardware, then there's an implicit understanding that they will at least supply working (closed) drivers of their own.

So I may not be able to get the device to work under Linux, or some other OS that wasn't listed on the box, but at least I'll be able to run it under Windows, as advertised.

Unfortunately, the driver for my particular card (Netgear WG511) is one of the worst pieces of crap that I've ever had the mispleasure of having to use.

By way of example, when run under Win 2K, it doesn't "remember" the settings, such as WEP keys, unless you're running as Admin. Netgear's advice has to be seen to be believed - they have a web page that tells you that you need to run with Administrator privileges to avoid the issue, and ON THE SAME PAGE, tells you how dangerous it is to run with admin privileges...

This same piece of crap utility loads itself into the system tray at startup, and continues to soak up processor time for no readily apparent reason - - you can kill it, and the wireless link continues to function.

This same utility also regularly sends packets out to numerical addresses on the web. Spyware, who knows?

In summary, if the manufacturers can't or won't supply working drivers, then the whole product they're selling is essentially fraudulent - they're promising something that they're not delivering.

So I believe that they should be FORCED to open the drivers.