Follow-up: The information posted above relates to Atheros, not Broadcom. However, it seems to demonstrate the reasoning behind the closed-source nature of wireless drivers.
We all know what we want from Linksys -- the Broadcom 802.11g drivers that are NDAed.
You want them so that Centrino laptops will have wireless support under Linux.
Broadcom has tons of GPLed network drivers already and we want this one too.
Here's why we probably won't get it anytime soon.
The Atheros 802.11a/b/g drivers were recently released on Sourceforge. However, the lowest-level hardware abstraction layer code was made closed-source.
This code manages much of the chip-specific operation of the Atheros driver. The HAL is provided in a binary-only form in order to comply with FCC regulations. In particular, a radio transmitter can only be operated at power levels and on frequency channels for which it is approved. The FCC requires that a software-defined radio cannot be configured by a user to operate outside the approved power levels and frequency channels. This makes it difficult to open-source code that enforces limits on the power levels, frequency channels and other parameters of the radio transmitter.
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Follow-up: The information posted above relates to Atheros, not Broadcom. However, it seems to demonstrate the reasoning behind the closed-source nature of wireless drivers.
We all know what we want from Linksys -- the Broadcom 802.11g drivers that are NDAed.
You want them so that Centrino laptops will have wireless support under Linux.
Broadcom has tons of GPLed network drivers already and we want this one too.
Here's why we probably won't get it anytime soon.
The Atheros 802.11a/b/g drivers were recently released on Sourceforge. However, the lowest-level hardware abstraction layer code was made closed-source.
This page explains their reasoning.
Here is the regulation they cite.
Yeah it sucks. They are afraid we will screw with the settings.