| ▲ | salawat 13 hours ago | |
Why is the baseband closed? That is the question we need to have answered. | ||
| ▲ | pabs3 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
It doesn't have to be, the PinePhone's modem runs a proprietary Linux distro, which you can replace with an open source Linux distro. That is only the ARM processor of it though, the Hexagon one is all proprietary. | ||
| ▲ | monocasa 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
A bajillion reasons, including that carriers basically white list basebands they're willing to interact with, and the patent situation means you only have a handful of baseband OEMs and they view their whole business model as building as big of a moat around their IP as possible. | ||
| ▲ | tsimionescu 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Ultimately, it all stems from two things - for one, it's illegal to emit radio waves without a special permit. And secondly, it's also extremely hard to process radio signals at the kind of rates we expect today. Together, these facts make it so that (competitive) wireless modems require organized businesses to create, and organized businesses don't want to share their code with competitors. A foundation dedicated to creating open hardware and software for a competitive wireless modem would face giant hurdles both in regulatory terms, and in hiring people who can actually work on this extremely difficult technical challenge. Also, building an open source software for controlling wireless modems that complies with the law is probably not fully possible. Per law, to sell a wireless device, you as the manufacturer are responsible for taking reasonable precautions against users misusing it to emit in reserved bands, or to not respect military device priority in the allowed bands. If every user is extended the rights and documentation for modifying the software as they see fit, you're clearly not taking reasonable precautions to prevent them from breaking the law. | ||
| ▲ | heavyset_go 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
Ask the FCC | ||