[amsat-bb] Re: HB9DRV

[Dominic Hawken]

On 28/09/2011 10:50, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:17:53 -0500
> "Greg Beat"<gregory.beat at comcast.net>  wrote:
>
>> "The support effort required has become more than I can realistically manage
>> - with many thousands of users, new radios and other hardware appearing all
>> the time and unexpected changes to the infrastructure used by HRD such as
>> QRZ.com I no longer have any time at all for other projects.
>
> Why not just open-source it?  It's already free-as-in-beer.  If it was also free-as-in-speech then there would be a potentially far greater number of eyes on the code, and a broader range of contributors.  There's also the chance to use existing work like hamlib in it, and avoid duplication of effort on driving all these different radios.
>
> I've never understood why so many in the amateur radio community are so keen to share circuit diagrams, antenna designs and all sorts of other information, but keep their software to themselves.  In this case, it's a no-brainer - HRD needs a lot of work, and there is a willing community out there who would do it given the chance.
>
> Proprietary software has absolutely no place in amateur radio.

I understand your logic and thought process - I am a strong advocate of 
open source having funded development of ApacheSSL in the past and tried 
to do my bit, but that's a broad statement.

There's lots of proprietary software involved, from that included in and 
with commercial transceivers to codecs to control software etc etc. It's 
truly up to the authors to decide the licensing module and the user to 
decide whether that fits with their ethos.

Open Source is a marvelous and vital part of Amateur Radio and virtually 
everything else to do with computing, but commercial models have their 
place too. In my humble opinion it's totally up to the user to make the 
decision as to what they use, support and evangalise.

Dominic G6NQO