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Comment by kyaghmour | Hacker News Reader

Because it's RF, shipping firmware can't be open source -- end user tweakable and replaceable. I bet this is one reason BT will never be good. If it could be open source there would be a winning stacks (or a few) that would bubble up on some git repo and be good enough for most everyone.

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There’s no reason Bluetooth stacks couldn’t be open source - unlike a GSM modem, a Bluetooth chipset should only be able to transmit in the 2.5GHz ISM band, which is unlicensed. Even if you can change the LO enough to get outside the band, there should be hardware filtering etc.

Of course, commercially available SDRs can transmit in all sorts of bands including licensed ones if you write the code to do so, and there are plenty of open-source applications for SDR, so it’s not like it’s impossible to legally have open firmware for whatever chipsets (even cellular modems)…

It's not just the licensed bands but also SAR. Commercial devices with BT are often close to the body. For those devices to be certified they have to operate within specific power levels, and this has to not be operable/changeable. If you can change power levels, you can bust the SAR limits.

It's one thing for geeks to do what they want with SDRs. It's another to get the certification to ship a real product.

Is that a law?

There are ath9k wifi cards with open source firmware https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware

> There are ath9k wifi cards with open source firmware

I use these almost exclusively for laptops and routers, I keep ripping Intel wifi cards out of laptops and replacing them with ath9k cards.

Ever since I started doing so things "just work" - no more random disconnects, lockups, need-to-reboot-to-get-wifi-working-again etc.

Technology can be so nice if it's open.

Is that because of regulation? What’s the concern of having open source for RF firmwares?

Regulatory requirements and certification.

the pine phone has end user replaceable firmware for its LTE modem. there exists an unofficial open source alternative for the official firmware (which incidentally has vulnerabilities that quectel seems to be unwilling to patch)

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