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1st there are international organizations, International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) and World
Administrative Radio Conference (WARC). 2nd is you can not transmit using these tools without an appropriate license. That does not mean you can not listen. I have not looked at this program but I suspect that is could be used without a license because it could be a receive only tool. The gateway system implies that transmitting is involved. The way that unlicensed people are kept from transmitting is by requiring that they register which includes supplying your call sign. Many of the APRS features are available to unlicensed people. Check out findu.com for an example. I might be interested in taking over maintenance of this software. Steve On 4/26/2011 6:15 PM, Fernando M. Maresca wrote: On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:48:41PM +0200, Jaime Robles wrote:Reading the link of the software I read: "The use of the APRS® Internet Gateway subsystem is allowed only for licensed radio amateur operators. APRS® is a registered trademark of Bob Bruninga, WB4APR."This statement is no sense. "licensed radio amateur operators" without proper context means nothing: there is no central/global/international authority on licencing amateur stations. Enforcing a rule like the pretended one in that sentence is almost impossible: you can comply over any unlicensed citizen of this country sending packets in the APRS-IS "subsystem", but if the "offender" didn't make any _RF_ transmissions, he's not breaking any law here, and the government agency who regulates ham radio does not regulate the Internet (as nobody does). Moreover, I can and do use aprs.fi by means of indirect (or even directly, don't really know if it's possible) packet sending to it's servers, but I'm *not* licensed in Finland. Those packets could be repeated (i.e. digipeated) over RF in any other part of the world by means of the same software used in the (APRS-IS) "subsystem" which, of course, does not provide any means of filtering such "not allowed" packets, so the "Internet Gateway Subsystem" fails to comply with itself. In some countries forging a callsign could be an offence. Here's it's not provided you did not transmitted any RF and you're not intending to steal the identity of any other person. Conceivably, I could set up software using a callsign "NONAMETT" and send packets over APRS-IS and I don't really think _any_ legal action can be held against me because I'm not breaking, forging or forcing anything to do so, look: http://aprs.fi/?call=a%2FTTT Did you really think that this is illegal? Furthermore, APRS-IS subsystem it's not a "subsystem" in any way, it's at most a protocol linking some "systems" (the software in the servers, igates and clients); the protocol spec is in the public domain or at the very least is not covered by any patents. The software in the servers could be made available through a public license. Same for other sw (clients, iGates, etc.). No one of these should use APRS as it's a trademark, or at least should get permission to do that. Besides the trademark issue, accepting the statement in that sentence would involve removing _any_ ham related sw for the very same reason, but going to an extreme, sw like nmap and tcpdump should be removed as well because it could be used to break into systems where one is not allowed.How does it fit with the GPL or the Debian requirements for free software?Following at some distance the firefox case, one should conclude that the sw could be used itself, but the trademark APRS not. So perhaps we would rename all aprs* packages to iceaprs*. Best regards, |
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