Re: Leverage in licensing discussions

[David Given <dg@cowlark.com>]

Josselin Mouette wrote:
[...]
> Or so you think. There are people who can read assembly and hex just as
> easily as I read C sources. It would probably take only a few days of
> testing for a hacker with the appropriate skills to remove firmware
> restrictions for reaching a frequency range, for example.

I believe that most if not all firmware images these days are signed or
encrypted.

[...]
> In such cases, there needs to be
> some appropriate process to validate the new versions and to enforce it
> legally.

Yup. Unlike most software, wireless stuff is rather indiscriminate about
what it interacts with. Wired ethernet is easy to control, wireless is
much less so; your right to experiment with wireless protocols does not
extend to preventing me making emergency calls.

The EM spectrum is very subject to tragedy-of-the-commons abuses. It's
in everybody's interest to ensure that people follow the rules when
using the EM spectrum, which is why regulators like the FCC have the
powers they do.

[...]
> This is what those keeping their sources closed wish. But there are no
> fairies to grant this wish.

Actually, I strongly suspect this is because most firmware images
contain proprietary embedded operating systems and/or proprietary
third-party libraries...

-- 
David Given
dg@cowlark.com