[kwlug-disc] FCC Rules Block use of Open Source

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

> On Sep 14, 2015, at 9:17 AM, Raymond Chen <raymondchen625 at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's the purpose of this lockdown? To prevent individual from flashing? It sounds like Jailbreak on iPhone. If the manufacturers make their devices good enough, most users won't bother to flash.

It’s being blown out of proportion, but not without reason.

The FCC is stating they want the radio controllers to be un-changeable by end users. They want to ensure you can’t “open up” your radio channel allocation to use frequencies that are not allowed in the US (think of 2.4GHz wifi channels 13 and 14), or to screw with your amplifier settings. These are good things to keep the average user from tinkering with. As a hardcore tinkerer and hacker, I agree with their rule. In fact, almost every cell phone already implements this by nature of having a radio processor that is completely separate from the application processor.

The problem, though, is that the way things are these days and the way they are heading is to incorporate more and more of the radio software in with the processor that also runs the firmware most people are familiar with (the “operating system” that DD-WRT, etc. replace). SoCs (Systems on Chip) blur the line between what is radio and what is application and the firmware images also become blurred, allowing the possibility for tinkerers to muck with things they should not.

Take these two facts and combine them with the “simplest, stupidest, cheapest way possible” way that most manufacturers will implement this proposed requirement and it’s VERY possible we will end up with wireless devices that we can’t replace the firmware on.

Sure, they’ll implement the protection poorly, but that’s not the point. We should be free to replace the firmware on devices we own. We should be able to screw with the hardware so long as we don’t violate FCC requirements which are there for good reason.

iPhone jailbreaking is more about Apple maintaining their iron grip on the user experience of their devices. The FCC proposal has merit. It’s the implementation we (or at least I) am worried about.

-A.