[Battlemesh] Linksys promises not to block free firmware

[David Lang]

On Fri, 13 May 2016, Mitar wrote:

>> This is a HUGE step back compared to the freedom mac80211-based drivers
>> on top of SoftMAC designs (such as ath9k or mt76) provide to
>> independent researches and developers, community mesh networks and
>> practically everyone in a couple of years from now when the official
>> product life-time of the chip has ended and thus the vendor is likely
>> to no longer update the wifi chip's firmware for features not yet
>> invented or implemented at the time of its making.
>
> But do we have a proposed design how to vendors should use softmac,
> allow ath9k, but at the same time satisfy FCC requirements? So maybe we
> should come up with a solution which we know it could work and then try
> to push for it? So do we as a community have a solution?

What FCC requirements are you talking about here?

The FCC proposed requirements that specifically talked about preventing people 
from loading DD-WRT, but has since backed off and said they don't intend to do 
that.

Everything else can (and is on SoftMAC designs) be handled in the OS drivers.

David Lang