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A Ham Radio Software Company Has Been Blacklisting Users For Leaving Negative Reviews (theregister.co.uk)
Gandalf_the_Beardy quotes a report from The Register: The Register reports on the story of Jim Giercyk, an amateur radio enthusiast who had his copy of the popular Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) software revoked after posting a negative review. Other radio hams have followed up with us regarding claims that this was not an isolated incident and others may have had their license keys blacklisted for being publicly critical of the company. And just to be clear: by blackballing keys, installed copies of the software stop working. Giercyk, a professional musician in South Carolina, U.S., says that after his dealings with HRD Software (which has since reinstated his software key) and the statement made by the developer's co-owner Dr Michael Carper, he takes issue with claims made by the company. Giercyk, aka N2SUB, told us on Tuesday: "The issue is not the refusal of service, the issue is that HRD disabled my software, and then offered to enable it in exchange for the removal of an online review of their product. It's extortion, not refusal of service." Giercyk also said that since he went public about his blacklisting last week, he has received messages from other users who have stories of their software keys being revoked by HRD without their knowledge for speaking up about having a bad support experience. A number of other readers pointed out a collection of bad reviews posted on hobbyist site eHam by customers who had their license keys blacklisted. HRD told us some of those users could have written their assessments after requesting a refund and deactivating their software, thus their licenses will appear revoked. Meanwhile, Reddit threads and follow-up discussions to Giercyk's catalyst forum post reveal similar stories of keys being revoked after critical comments about Ham Radio Deluxe have appeared online. Other sources allege some amateur radio forums have in the past deleted posts critical of HRD.
Yes, ham radio is still very much a "thing". But to me, the one "thing" it never has been is the purchasing of closed, proprietary software that can be turned off at whim by the developer. To me, ham radio has always been a unique hands-on opportunity to learn what's "behind the knobs" of a piece of communications hardware (or now, software). Even if you don't build (or write) your own stuff, even if you're primarily interested in using it to talk to others, it still gives you (or should give you) the opportunity to learn how it all works, to make technology just a little less mysterious and intimidating. Ham radio still provides a creative outlet for hundreds of thousands of people. It helps STEM students learn about electronics, math, physics, or just about any other field of science and engineering even remotely associated with radio communications, such as computers and networking, satellites and remote sensing. When I got into it in high school nearly 50 years ago, it confirmed for me that I wanted to become an electrical engineer, a decision I have never regretted. Even many who decide that a STEM career isn't for them are hams simply because it's an enjoyable hobby.
HRD is widely used among Hams. One of its claims to fame is integration with amateur transceivers and other equipment; it can control and monitor a wide variety of complex modern rigs, amps, tuners, etc. through serial ports, USB, Ethernet, etc.
Honestly I'm disappointed with amateur radio in this regard; reliance on proprietary IP for too many things; proprietary stuff like HRD (there are open logging alternatives, but HRD dominates), closed source firmware from all the major manufacturers, IP protected digital audio protocols... seems like not enough hams value open platforms; they pay through the nose for proprietary stuff without a second thought.
There are brilliant exceptions, but they aren't getting the attention they deserve. You'd think there would be a dozen kickstarter projects for open HT/mobile/base hardware with firmware published on GitHub, displacing the traditional proprietary manufacturers.... the hardware engineering is trivial given the levels of expertise found among these people.
There are alternatives to HamRadioDeluxe, free and Open Source solutions too, Skywave Linux seems to be fairly good built on Ubuntu with all the Ham Radio Software already included, it is a live CD or you can run it from a USB memory stick (thumbdrive) or you can install it on a PC, http://skywavelinux.com/
also most other major distros will include most of this software in their repositories so installing them in a new linux install is as simple as launching synaptic or using apt-get from the commandline if you already know the names of the app you want, synaptic has a good search feature by keywords so it makes looking for apps easier
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
A bunch of the software in the world of ham radio is pretty bad--for whatever reason it seems like everybody is stuck on developing software for Windows 95/98 with Visual Basic or FoxPro, and they typically shoot for "it gets the job done" and not much else. There is some great (and free) software out there, but HRD isn't one of them. The real advances in amateur radio software are coming from the devs and hams who embrace open source, or at least believe in sharing the knowledge.
Unless they're selling it as a subscription service, I really doubt that line in the TOS would hold up in court. For a contract to be legally valid, there has to be an exchange of consideration - you have to get something for the money you paid. Putting a line in the contract which allows them to unilaterally revoke everything you paid for nullifies that consideration, essentially invalidating the contract. They'd have to give you your money back to enforce that clause.
The difference between being an idiot, and being a visionary, is mostly a matter of being right at the end of the day. Turns out Stallman is proven more correct with every passing year, as more boxes get closed, more systems get locked down, and more control gets exerted over every aspect of our lives.
His vision led him to create gcc. Without gcc, do you think we would have had clang or free copies of Visual Studio? Without free compilers, do you think any of the open source world would have existed? And without the open source world, how do you suppose the software landscape would have looked by now?
It's not scary that post gets +3, interesting. It's only scary that you don't know your history, yet feel qualified to comment on it.
Yep, some "talking on the radio." Lots of examples of that:
- Maximum average number of contacts per minute for an hour (this is a "contesting" rate)
- Number of countries you can reach with a given setup (this is usually referred to as a DXCC)
- I'm working on a variant of this where I intend to continue confirming contacts with 100 unique countries or territories every year. (3 years, so far)
- Distance per Watt (SSB to Hawaii on 10mW in my case)
- How many contacts you can make with a setup you carry to the top of a mountain, yourself (look up "SOTA" or Summits on the Air)
- How fast can you decode Morse code, by ear?
It's also some of the stuff that KA9Q (Phil) was talking about. RF is incredibly fascinating and amateur radio is a great way to have an output for what you learn, in practice.
- Most effective antenna you can design and construct, with some constraints (or not!)
- Maximum possible gain at a given frequency (look up the OH8X 160m beam or ES5TV's 15m stack)
- How far _below_ the noise floor a given modulation scheme can be decoded (-32dB in my case, usually a combination of hacking on software and searching for the right solar conditions)
- How good an inexpensive homebrew rig can be (look up Ashar Farhan VU2ICQ)
- How good can a computer get at decoding Morse code (CW)? (Look up AG1LE and a few others who are using Machine Learning and other techniques for this)
And yes, it can also be a social hobby. Some people like meeting others from around the world and just talking.
Yes, some of ham radio is old guys talking for hours on end about their prostate problems or the most amazing grilled cheese sandwich for hours on end. But it's also amazing people doing amazing things. Listen to 144MHz (2m) locals or even the typical 3.8MHz (75m) conversation and you'll instantly get turned off. Dig a little deeper and there's some really cool stuff happening.
- K7ADD