[amsat-bb] Re: Icom D-Star

[Eric Christensen]

On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 09:00 -0500, Gregg Wonderly wrote:
> This is one of those experimentation moments.  Not everyone is happy with where 
> it is at, but without some more participation, those experimenting now will be 
> the ones setting the standards, and if you are not happy with those results, it 
> will be your fault not theirs, because you chose not to participate.

I'd like to point out that it's difficult, at best, to participate when
you can't "roll your own".  There are many codecs available out there
today that don't require purchasing a license to use.  The biggest
problem right now is that D-Star isn't backward compatible or you could
implement one of those freely-licensed codecs now and let people design
their own implementation.

Packet radio, however, is a good example of an open project.  AX25 is
the basis for packet radio and since the specification was released it
allowed anyone to design and develop their own software and hardware
systems.  Take a subset of that project, APRS, and you'll see this even
more.  How many software clients are out there that use the APRS
specification as a means to communicate with other APRS users?  Kenwood,
Byonics, and Yaesu, among others, have all made hardware devices
utilizing the APRS and AX25 open specifications and more will come.

Open is better and until all the pieces are freely available you won't
catch one of these devices on my side.

--Eric W4OTN