[ubuntu-uk] Why not fix this?

[Terence Simpson]

Alan Pope wrote:
> Hi Alec,
>
> On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 09:39:44AM +0100, Alec Wright wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, 2007-07-30 at 08:30 +0000, Alan Pope wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi Chris,
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 08:45:40AM +0100, Chris Rowson wrote:
>>>       
>>>> This bug has been driving me round the bend now for three releases of
>>>> Ubuntu. Edgy, Feisty and Gutsy. I really don't know why it isn't
>>>> getting fixed, any ideas?
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Get a better supported network card? :S
>>>       
>> But surely we want to encourage as many people as possible to use
>> ubuntu. You wouldn't want to get a new network card for linux, would
>> you? It's easier to add a few lines to code to network manager.
>>
>>     
>
> You also want to encourage hardware vendors to make cards that have nice 
> open drivers that dont require stupid kludges like madwifi and ndiswrapper 
> to make them work.
>
> (stupid as in architecturally insane, not stupid as in bad code)
>
> The best way to make a hardware vendor notice these things is to _not_ buy 
> their kit in the first place - vote with your wallet. I bought a laptop 
> which is intel throughout, no nvidia, no ati, no bonkers network stuff.
>
> This of course doesn't help everyone, I am just stuggesting that the device 
> in question isn't a lost cause, a plugin pcmcia/usb wireless adapter could 
> be used to overcome the current bug/hurdle.
>
> Cheers,
> Al.
>
>   
Actually, the Madwifi driver is GPL(v2), the reason it's not classed as 
"open" is because part of the driver (the ath_hal part to be exact) has 
to be distributed in a binary only form. This seems to be due to some 
FCC law.
 From the README:

"The ath_hal module contains the Atheros Hardware Access Layer (HAL).
This code manages much of the chip-specific operation of the 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 the
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. See
http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Orders/2001/fcc01264.pdf
for the specific FCC regulation. Because the module is provided in a
binary-only form it is marked "Proprietary"; this means when you load it
you will see messages that your system is now "tainted".

A detailed discussion of the pros and cons of this design can be found
at http://madwifi.org/wiki/HAL "


Terence