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Comment by netr0ute | Hacker News Reader

> the FCC and equivalents make it almost impossible for there to be open hardware that connects to the phone network

How?

FCC has issued guidance for manufacturers to protect against modifications that would break FCC rules. The easiest way to do that is to have a closed-source baseband firmware.

https://prplfoundation.org/fcc-open-source-router-software-i...

Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Something tells me you might have a difficult time convincing say Qualcomm with just that reasoning.

You could conceivably reverse-engineer the hardware if you got the support of places like MIT, and then it's fair game from there.

Asking might come with a large fine if 911 service is interrupted.

A fine might actually be lower cost than losing freedom to binary blobs, so there's that.

But most of the time Quallcomm, Broadcom and the others have an army of lawyers and an absurd amount of money to burn to ensure that your project, life and general existence is ruined, just to protect their bottom line.

It depends what you mean by 'closed-source'. Yes it's probably impossible to certify a radio baseband that anyone can hack on. It would be possible to manufacture a radio baseband for which all the source code was public and anyone could verify that that source code was running.

There is no legal requirement to close the baseband off. They tried to close off routers in the same way and got pushback.

Open hardware means that people can be their own manufacturer.

There are lots of places that will make PCBs for you, and sell you the parts to solder together.

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