On Jan 12, 2011, at 9:17 PM, Jamie Morken wrote: > That sounds like a pretty good system. I should say right off the bat that > if I am involved to make this I would want to add a clause in the open source > hardware license to not allow the hardware to be used for military > applications. I think it is important to state this at the start before I > would get involved working on a new gnu radio board. If people can live with > that requirement I am happy to do the layout work.
How would you define "military applications"? I collect surplus military gear as a hobby, and I'm presently working on a GNUradio-based implementation of a decoder for high-speed Morse code transmissions from my vintage AN/GRA-71 code-burst keyer (for which key pieces of the original reception hardware is unobtainium). I'm presently working entirely in simulation, but my USRP will get pressed into service for this before long. Would you consider that application to be "military"? Or how about if I were to use the hardware to intercommunicate with other military radio hardware (such as any of the countless surplus military radios used on the ham radio bands every day)? What if I throw it in my HMMWV and use it on a ham band during a Veteran's Day parade? What if a soldier wishes to use the hardware on-base for MARS activities? If any such things would be considered "military", then I'd neither use nor contribute towards any hardware that's shackled by such a silly restriction. Furthermore, I doubt very much that the restriction would be at all enforceable. Personally, I don't think that any prior restraint placed upon end use of the hardware (beyond the requirement to keep derivative works open in most cases) is compatible with the very libertarian principles of the open software movement. I've released code under GPL. I thus place certain limited restrictions on the use of the code to keep it open, but beyond those limited restrictions, it's really none of my business to tell people what they can and can't do with it. If I wanted to control its end use to that degree, then I wouldn't have released it in the first place. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <n...@nf6x.net> Web page: http://www.nf6x.net/ GnuPG public key available from my web page. _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
