On Fri, 2005-11-25 at 19:08 -0500, Temlakos wrote: > > And I agree with you: the fault for the chronic WiFi problems lies with > manufacturers who won't cooperate with the open-source movement. In some cases - it is the FCC that may actually be at fault. The FCC has regulations on what devices can be user configurable - with respect to how much power can be sent to the antenna. Some cards control that via a chip, but that's more expensive than via software/firmware. But because of the FCC regulation, such software/firmware has to be closed to the user. This is why some cards have non open firmware that has to be used, and I believe it is also why madwifi uses a closed source HAL (rest of madwifi is open source).
