FSF Certifies Atheros-Based ThinkPenguin 802.11 N USB Adapter

gnujoshua writes "You may recall that last Fall, the LulzBot AO-100 3D printer was awarded the use of the Free Software Foundation's Respects Your Freedom certification mark. Today, the FSF announced certification of the ThinkPenguin TPE-N150USB, Wireless N USB Adapter, which uses the Atheros ARAR9271 chip. The FSF's RYF certification requirements are focused on the software (not the hardware designs) of a product, which in this case was primarily the device firmware and ath9k-htc module in the Linux-libre kernel. (Disclosure: I work for the FSF.) There's also a cool story that is within this story... which is that the firmware for the Atheros AR9271 chipset was released as a result of a small device seller (ThinkPenguin) striking a deal with a large electronic device manufacturer (Qualcomm Atheros) to build a WLAN USB adapter that shipped with 100% free software firmware. This deal was possible largely because two motivated Qualcomm Atheros employees, Adrian Chadd and Luis Rodriguez, made the internal-push to get the firmware released as free software."

Comments

Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi?

[acariquara]

Looks like the price of freedom is pretty steep.

It's not like we are starved for wifi dongles that "just work" on Linux without NDISWrapper. We're not in 2003.

eg: http://dx.com/p/802-11n-150mbps-wifi-wlan-wireless-network-usb-adapter-53538 $10 bucks including shipping, and there are TONS cheaper than this. I just looked for one that specifically said "Linux compatible".

Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi?

[alantus]

Looks like the price of freedom is pretty steep.

It's not like we are starved for wifi dongles that "just work" on Linux without NDISWrapper. We're not in 2003.

eg: http://dx.com/p/802-11n-150mbps-wifi-wlan-wireless-network-usb-adapter-53538 $10 bucks including shipping, and there are TONS cheaper than this. I just looked for one that specifically said "Linux compatible".

As a matter of fact, I wish it "just worked".
I have one of these dongles, and last time I tried to use it I was hitting this bug:
https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2011-November/007467.html

Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi?

[Arker]

Freedom isnt about cheap and it never was.

A dongle that 'just works' today with a particular binary wont necessarily work tomorrow on a different machine or after a simple recompile with different options, let alone after a major software upgrade.

At the moment this appears to be the only properly supported wireless dongle on the market. It should be no surprise it's a little more expensive than the junk.

Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a matter of fact, I wish it "just worked".
I have one of these dongles, and last time I tried to use it I was hitting this bug:
https://lists.ath9k.org/pipermail/ath9k-devel/2011-November/007467.html

This is a bug from November 2011 is against the same chipset. But, it was a module that was loading proprietary firmware.

The firmware was released as free software within the past couple of months. So, now instead of the ath9k kernel module folks having to treat the firmware as a black box, they can file bugs and submit patches to the firmware itself.

The reason we certified this device is because it carries freedom to the user. Not arbitrary freedoms, but the specific freedoms to run the program, share it with others, make modifications to the source code, and share modified versions of the source. With this freedom, a user can not only work with others to find and eliminate bugs, but they can find ways to adapt and improve the software so as to squeeze the most they can out of the device. The same can't be said with the 2011 adapters that shipped with this chipset.

And, this isn't just idle speculation. Already we have seen a fair bit of cooperation between this firmwares lead developers and the ath9k module maintainers. I would be very surprised if the almost two-year old bug you pointed to still exists. But if it does, then at least I know you and I can easily reach out to a trustworthy community of free software hackers to explain to us the problem.

Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi?

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

If I can spend 10% and it works, I'm happy.

http://dx.com/p/ultra-mini-nano-usb-2-0-802-11n-b-g-150mbps-wi-fi-wlan-wireless-network-adapter-black-71905

Therefore, I am happy.

Enjoy your purity. I'll enjoy my $48.60 in leftover money.

Re:Yeah, but $54 for a USB Wifi?

[Arker]

Sure, there's a point to buying quality hardware, but at the same time, why is buying a $54 dongle and keeping it for a long time better than buying a $20 one today and buying an improved one for $20 sometime in the future.

Primarily because doing so sends a clear signal to suppliers that we ARE willing to pay extra to get something done right.

Secondarily because buying the "improved one" should be done on my timescale and for my reasons, not forced because I have a piece of junk that wont work properly.

This isn't 2004, you really don't have to search for laptops/wireless dongles that support Linux, its a rarity if they don't support Linux.

To the contrary, although it is not 2004 and some things have improved, I still count one single dongle that actually supports GNU/Linux properly. One.

Supporting one or many binary distributions of GNU/Linux does not constitute proper support. Meeting the criteria for this particular certification does.

Master Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

one thing i noticed last week on ThinkPenguin is that their adapters generally support Master Mode making it easy to build access points. i don't think this can be said for most adapters requiring ndiswrapper.

Re:Master Mode

[adri]

The wifi part of the hardware does. One of the reasons we opened up the firmware was to let people at it to make it better at supporting master mode.

The NIC has a small embedded CPU to act as a PCIeUSB gateway and a small amount of RAM to run code and buffer frames. The problem with master mode is the amount of RAM that you need for each associated station. So there's been discussion about moving some of the stuff done in the NIC CPU (transmit aggregation, rate control) into the host, so the NIC itself doesn't need to store (that much|any) per-station state.

Re:Why is it so very last-generation?

[Arker]

Unfortunately, at the moment, the manufacturers perceive the proprietariness of their products as a value. You see how much this costs as is?

But it's real. Every bit is there, driver, firmware, documentation. This thing will be supported as long as there is one old hacker that has one and doesnt like to replace a working part.

And honestly, I know, I like having the latest and greatest when I can too, but can you please quit shitting on those less fortunate? USB 1.1 is 12mbps and there are a lot of people trying to work on less than that. I have the best service available in my area and it would not be a bottleneck in my system. (Not that I run critical systems on wireless anyway, it's ethernet, but if I needed to run something wireless the USB 1.1 throughput limit wouldnt slow me down.)

Last years tech fully and truly available is infinitely better than this years tech locked away where I can never see it, even if I did supposedly buy the hardware. And hopefully this will lead to the manufacturers starting to figure this stuff out and doing more of it.