[GNUz] ndiswrapper - licences...

[Jim Cheetham]

On Apr 10, 2006, at 8:55 PM, Don Gould wrote:
> Aside, thanks for your views.  Personally I would like to see more 
> done to box Linux drivers and instructions with every product on the 
> market.

The main problems that are encountered are economic -- most of the 
manufacturers can't see the point of spending any time supporting 
anything that isn't windows.

The other problem, particularly in the wireless card arena, is that 
manufacturers are creating software-driven cards; effectively wireless 
winmodems. These are physically capable of transmitting at a greater 
power and frequency range than the FCC permits; therefore the device 
only gets it's (essential) FCC clearance if they limit the card's 
activity via software.

The problem then is that if they allow access to the card API, or 
otherwise open the software, they would be selling a device capable of 
breaching the FCC license conditions; they would not be permitted to 
sell it.

You can imagine that the non-limited cards are cheaper to make than the 
hardware-limited ones ;-)

-jim