Michael Ossman of GreatScottGadgets has written an excellent post to the FCC:
Excerpt:
I am the owner of Great Scott Gadgets, a US company that makes open source test equipment primarily for the information security industry. As a designer and manufacturer of communications equipment, I commend the Commission for seeking to clarify and streamline the rules for equipment authorization. I believe that, on the whole, the updated rules will benefit the electronics industry. However, I am concerned that the rules regarding software control of radio parameters place an undue burden on device manufacturers and unnecessarily restrict the actions of end users. My concerns arise from rules already in place for Software Defined Radio (SDR) devices. I am encouraged to see that the Commission is eliminating certain special rules for SDR equipment and seeks to treat SDR and non-SDR devices in the same way. However, while the Commission notes that “the existing SDR rules have proven to be insufficiently flexible,” the proposed rules broaden the reach of those rules to non-SDR equipment.
Full post:
http://greatscottgadgets.com/2015/09-08-comments-fcc-nprm/
I hope other Open Hardware vendors speak up against this!
I can’t find the quote location right now, but a few days ago someone posted a joke, something like below:
“Why don’t we ever see anything like: FCC announces all routers must be open hardware/source, vendors have 30 days to comment.”
Firmware Security 