[nmglug] wireless pcmcia card

[Sam Noble]

On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 14:47 -0600, pi wrote:
> The driver, or some part thereof, MUST be closed source, because 
> otherwise the FCC gets nervous that people can modify the card
> software 
> to do things it shouldn't, like transmit on out-of-band frequencies.
> The 
> hardware on other cards usualy prevents that on other cards.

FWIW, Intel's IPW2xxx, and the prism54 cards have this exact same issue.
The 'firmware' can not be Free software because of the FCC et al.
It 'feels' slightly worse for the atheros cards because the closed code
is a kernel module rather than a hotplug loaded firmware blob, but AFAIK
it's essentially the same issue.
Of course the firmware on the older B cards like the Prism2 and Orinoco
is not any more Free, it's just we think less about it due to it being
stored in non-volatile onboard chips.

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