hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1860.txt

Episode: 1860
Title: HPR1860: FiftyOneFifty interviews Chris Waid of Save WiFi
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1860/hpr1860.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:28:04

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Howdy folks, this is 5150 for Hacker Public Radio.
I'm here tonight with Chris Wade, the CEO of ThinkPingwin, and also someone who's been instrumental in the SAVE Wi-Fi movement.
And I really think if you're not all right familiar with this issue, this may be the most important podcast that you've listened to this year.
So Chris, let's you start off and explain the SAVE Wi-Fi movement and why it's necessary.
Okay, so SAVE Wi-Fi is a reaction to rules, rule changes that the FCC is passing and proposing, there's two different, there's rules that have already passed and then there's rules that are being proposed.
Right now we're fighting the rules that are being proposed because those rules will be able to hopefully curtail them from ever getting passed.
The rules that have passed, we're going to have to go back and fight one way or another at a later date.
So basically, what the FCC is its Federal Communications Commission and they basically certify hardware devices.
So things like computers and wireless routers and cell phones and basically any kind of like trying to device, these devices have firmware on them.
And or operating systems and they also have pretty much all Trion XC stays have some sort of wireless chip.
And these wireless chips are, they use the airwaves and that makes it the FCC's territory as far as regulating them.
This is usually a good thing because if everybody was just using whatever frequencies they want to, nobody would have helped understand each other.
The best example I can give is if you ever listen to a radio station and you're hearing the radio station you're currently listening to or trying to listen to and you're also hearing another radio station, you can get an idea of what's going on.
So you're hearing two different radio stations at the same time and that's because they're not sticking to their spectrum, they're a little part of the spectrum.
So the same thing that happens with wireless devices and other types of radio equipment and so on.
The current, what it currently appears to be happening is the FCC is reacting to basically that interference and they're doing it in a way that is going to result in linear factors locking down basically any kind of device that has a modern wireless chip in it.
So basically, it has to do with software to find radio and basically what software to find radio is it's a radio that can be used for multiple things and your computer software controls it.
Or your wireless router software, your firmware that controls the radio directly as opposed to it being defined or controlled by having some other limitation by the radio, basically the radio itself.
So any user, as a result of this, any user can, if the user is able to replace the firmware anyway, on say like a wireless router, then they can cause interference on spectrums that part of the spectrum that is not, they're not allowed to, that the router manufacturer has not been certified for has not been authorized to use and in that part you're not allowed to do it either.
There may be certain circumstances where it is allowed if you are, for example, a ham radio operator, then you are licensed to do more than what the original equipment might be, you know, you might be permitted to otherwise do with the equipment usually, but as a normal user, you wouldn't be able to go beyond certain parameters.
So what was going on or it appears that the FCC hasn't exactly come out and said in any kind of clear statements that I've been able to identify and we have anybody else that has come into this discussion, there have been people who have made fact statements of facts, but it appears to have been nothing other than speculation or reading of other information that was said by others and then they basically just stated us fact.
So basically the, what's been said that is still speculation is that it's the FCC is reacting to radio or weather Doppler interference with weather Doppler systems around airports, there is definitely has definitely happened, but we don't know whether or not that's the, they're reacting to that particular incidents or incident.
They have definitely find companies which is within their authority to do so.
I think I'm dropping packets like a madman and so mumbles kicking me out like every three minutes, so I'm missing about half what Chris says, so wouldn't this, but fortunately he's the one recording, so if I ask him a question and it seems like where were you a minute ago when he answered that already, that's why I admit.
I'm still here, Chris, as a PC manufacturer, I guess one of the things we're really worried about is this is going to be applied to PCs, if not just and not just routers, consumer routers, because it could, it could
strute the Wi-Fi chips that are going in the PCs going forward are software defined radio, especially if the FCC's definition that if you can get to the chip and change it, change the power or anything, then it's a software defined radio.
So as a manufacturer, you're looking ahead, you're not going to be able to buy motherboards that don't have for laptops that don't have something that looks like a software defined radio for the FCC.
Yeah, so I think I'm going to start talking now. So yeah, basically it's any device that has a software defined radio, and every modern Wi-Fi chip is basically a software defined radio.
They haven't actually, the lawyers who look through this and are more knowledgeable than I, as well as some of the software developers who are working as part of the Safe Wi-Fi Coalition,
have basically said they haven't actually defined software defined radio, but all modern devices in some way are a software defined radio.
So all the Wi-Fi chips out there. So we can, I mean, we can actually point to some very good examples of that.
So like we have 802-11 and USB Wi-Fi adapters in our catalog, and the source code has been released for the chipsets.
There's two chipsets. It's ATH9K-HTC, and Adrian and Lewis, and thing Penguin, and between the three of us, mostly, got Qualcomm.
And Adrian and Lewis worked for, they used to work for Qualcomm, Atheros.
And together, we basically got Qualcomm Atheros to really to cooperate on releasing the source code, and the firmware, it runs on these adapters, these USB adapters, and we have two particular, sorry, three different USB adapters, two different chipsets that are part of ATH9K-HTC.
That we use in our products, and these would be software defined radios. So this is a perfect example.
And I'm really not entirely sure how they would prevent a user from, well, I guess the way they would prevent a user, I guess what you'd have to do is you'd have to change the Wi-Fi, like if it was a USB Wi-Fi adapter, you'd have to implement a proprietary,
well, the firmware, actually, is actually part of the operating system, and then gets uploaded to the USB chip, Wi-Fi chip.
But I guess they would have to put a, I'm not really sure how you would put a lock on them, maybe a hardware lock, I don't know, it doesn't actually say, so normally, I would assume that companies would implement these locks in software.
It doesn't appear that the FCC is requiring them to put in any kind of lock in hardware.
What they've actually asked more specifically of me and your Ventures is how they're going to prevent the loading of third-party firmware,
which, and then they use DDWRT as an example, which explicitly implies that there's going to be some sort of signature checking.
And I'm thinking this was related to routers, but it could be, again, it's not specific, the regulations aren't specific to wireless routers.
So you would also, therefore, you would have to jump into the problem of this also being applied to laptops and other devices.
The issue itself kind of has snuck in on us because there's already rules, again, that have passed, that are already a major problem.
We've already seen router manufacturers updating their firmware to add these software locks.
LibreCMC is a distribution that runs on one of our routers.
It's 100% free distribution that we sponsor and work on.
And Bob is the lead developer for that distribution.
And the routers, now he mostly tries to focus on the router that we, a particular router that we sell, but I think Penguin,
but he also does support other, there's also other routers that are supported, or you can at least run, run LibreCMC on.
And during his testing, when we get in these other routers and we get newer versions of these routers, the routers are the same, or in many cases.
And the boards will, the only difference will be updated firmware on the board.
And so we've already seen, he's already seen these locks, and he's talking to me all the time about it, about how,
there's all these companies and they're all adding locks to their firmwares now.
And now we realize why they're doing that.
It's actually kind of humorous because one of the largest manufacturers of routers on the market, we've actually been told that
they, and my understanding was that they were talking to the CEO.
And at the top of the company, they're not even aware of the issue, which probably isn't really too surprising, but they're concerned.
Because they're big on, I guess they're big and concerned about making sure that their customers as well can flash whatever from where they'd like onto the router.
So it's quite an interesting.
Now at the lower levels, which I would imagine are engineering levels, they've basically just implemented these locks.
These were already seeing them, and these rules are already, some of these rules are already in effect now.
I'm not sure exactly what the dates were for the new rules, but nonetheless.
So there's already problems, and the rules that we want people to, or we're trying to get curtailed now are a set of proposed rules.
And those rules basically, there's what's called an open comment period, and then the FCC is required to take feedback on any rule changes.
This is the opportunity for users and manufacturers, and anybody, any organization that wants to submit feedback to the FCC on these rule changes can do so.
So what we've done is we've gone and created a page website at www.savewifi.org that explains, there's a lot more actually on the website than this, but basically it's very nice simple instructions on how to file comments with the FCC, it gives you some instructions on how to do it.
The different types of issues that you might run into yourself, and so some just examples, some sample comments, kind of basically kind of thing.
We're also working on more of a letter also, so it will be easier hopefully in the near future to comment with the FCC.
So going back to computers and how it might impact us, we don't entirely know all the details yet, and one, there's not, so these devices are a typical computer right now is manufactured with a separate ship.
But there's, it really depends on a number of different factors. A lot of these newer systems, not the ones that are really on the market right now, well some of them that are on the market right now, like for example, a lot of the Chromebooks, these all have what's called the system on a chip, and they've got integrated Wi-Fi, and it's basically as a software to find radio, and it can be controlled by the main OS.
So those types of systems would basically have to be locked down.
That is the cheapest way to do it anyway. It's the easiest quickest way to do it, and that's what's happening in practice. Let's play it that way.
There could potentially be other ways to deal with this problem, but again, FCC has already gone out and made the assumption that the only way, and again, this is because this is the cheapest way, so this is the way everybody's going to do it, is to lock the devices down.
So presumably, short of, and the FCC can't go and say they can't really tell, I mean, a fracture, how to lock a device down, or how to stop the parameter changes.
So I'm not entirely, there's been some people who have said, oh, well, they only care about, you know, that you're, that you're not violating the spectrum, where the users aren't allowed to violate the spectrum.
I'm not maybe true, but if the end result is that manufacturers are going to lock the devices down, because they have to be competitive, and they need to do stuff the quickest and cheapest way possible, which they all, they pretty much all do.
Nobody, nobody, nobody is really, as far as I understand, nobody's contributing significant amounts of resources to developing router software.
What they're, and again, I'm talking specifically in the case of routers at the moment, so a lot of the improvements that we get with networking and routing devices and similar are actually coming out of the fact that the sources are available, and if the sources aren't available, basically all innovation is going to stop.
It's going to come to a screeching halt. One of the issues I've, I'd like to give as an example of this, is buffer upload.
So basically, this was, this is, this is a really great example. Recently, there's been support added for this, and it's been tested on a fork of OpenWRT.
Basically, what this does is it's, it's basically algorithms that better manage network traffic, I guess.
Basically, the end result is that low, low, ultra low latency, nothing like we've seen before. It's, it's so much better.
And what that basically means is there's something called bandwidth, and there's something called latency, and bandwidth is basically how much data can come over the pipe.
Um, latency is how quickly, um, you'll get a response, basically. So, um, if the latency goes down, your download isn't going to get done any quicker.
But if you visit a web page, you're going to get a much quicker response. That page is going to show up much quicker on your screen.
So, it's, it's a, this is a really huge thing. Every end user is going to notice this, this huge, uh, increase in basically, uh, performance, I, I mean, I would probably call it almost like performance, at least from the end user's perspective, your typical end user's perspective.
And it didn't require, you know, a faster connection. Um, what it required was this innovation in software. Um, so we wouldn't have that if it wasn't for.
And, and, and the guy actually who, who work is who was, um, I, I believe though, the, the main person behind the buffer, the spuffer bloke fix, basically.
And again, it's not really, it's not really a fix. It's more of, um, I don't know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a more of an innovation than a, than an actual like bug that was fixed in this particular case.
Um, he's actually one of the people who's also been working, um, with the state Wi-Fi campaign and writing, uh, trying to write up a nice template letter, trying to explain and document in detail.
Exactly why, um, it's so important that we have access to the source, well, well, we don't have the locks is more specifically what he's, what he's talking about.
Um, and though we continue to have access to the source code and, and how this is actually, um, significantly advanced, uh, networking, uh, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in the Linux, um, and any, in any operating system, um, uh, that's using the, well, any, any distribution that's using the nice kernel.
So it is something that is, this fix didn't just, uh, impact routers, it impacted laptops and it impacted billions of devices, um, these, these innovations, these, these improvements, though first, for initially, they'll show up in open to BRT, they'll show up in Liberty, CMC, um, you know, third party front, but eventually they make it back to the main Linux kernel and that ends up shipping with billions.
So it's, it's not, it's not, you know, this isn't just a hacker issue. This isn't, this isn't just for hackers. This is for everybody. Um, your mom is going to see, uh, you know, an improvement in, in, in the response time of her, you know, her Facebook posts or whatever website she's using her email, you know, her, her, her, her, her email messages will pop up quicker.
There's, um, there's other great examples of, um, of, of improvements as well. Um, and not so much at this level, but a different part of the stack, um, software stack. Um, the one I like to use is because I also, this is one that I have a more personal, uh, or more closer relationship to, um, as far as software and development improvements go.
I'm not, I'm not actually, um, I wasn't actually involved in the, in the, in the fix so much as Lewis, the code, but going back to what I was talking about originally was the ATH 9K HTC firmware, um, that we got released.
Now, think penguin, um, and Adrienne Lewis had nothing to do with this. This was a, this was a bug, um, that affected a lot of users who were using, um,
they are 9271, um, chipset that, that this, this from where, uh, supports. And basically, the problem wasn't really with the chipset. It was really with, um, the computers that, uh, these devices, these USB Wi-Fi devices were being plugged into.
And these devices had a problem with, um, in a packet size, um, and this wasn't, this isn't the, um, we're not talking about, uh,
uh, we're talking about basically the USB packet. Um, and so these controllers, the USB controllers on these systems wouldn't handle larger packet sizes. They basically, they fail. Um, maybe they, maybe it would work, uh, you know, initially, but, you know, you, you run into all different problems with all different types of devices that would plug into if the device, the USB adapters that you were using, um, we're using a bigger packet size.
So this, um, there was a person who went out and he hunted down what the problem was. And he fixed it. And long behold, um, we were actually investigating the issue, um, around the same time. And, you know, we came across with fix. And we were like, this is awesome.
Uh, so we tested it and we built it, we built the sources. Um, we applied, it was, it was, it was literally, I think it was one line. It was like, it was just, it wasn't even, it wasn't, I wouldn't even call it like, uh, uh, fix really. It was, it was, it was literally just, I think it was just the change of the packet size.
Um, so it was like, maybe two numbers, something like that. Anyway, so this is, this is, um, and this is, uh, this, you know, he changed it.
We built the source code. We built the firmware again. And we're like, okay, let's test this. And we tested it. And it worked great. Um, so, you know, then we started, you know, distributing it to our customers. And, um, you know, lots of people were really, really happy when they, they got it, you know, they expected it to work. And then it, you know, the doctors didn't. But, um, the, um, then we had a solution for him, which is great.
Um, and eventually, uh, this firmware will make it back into the mainline kernel. And you will have, uh, I, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of users will be impacted by this, by this improvement. But it's going to be significant. Um, because it, you have to understand chipsets. Um, chipsets are designed. There's not too many companies designing chipsets.
So, you know, there might be four or five, six, maybe, um, at the most probably, um, they're designing Wi-Fi chipsets. And that number is actually shrinking. So there's, there's probably only like a really small handful today. Um, I don't, I have to find the most recent Wi-Fi chips. I think there's probably only like, I don't know, maybe four or five, maybe. Um, anyway. So, all these chips are being used in different devices.
And that means that they all are going to have, they're all going to, you're going to run into the same problems, no matter which of these USB devices you have. Um, so it isn't just impacting our customers. Um, this is impacting, you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe billions of customers. Um, I believe, I calculated there's 500,000 USB Wi-Fi adapters a year or so for just, just to, just to people running the new links. Um,
so, um, yeah, I mean, so there's, there's definitely, um, and if you figure, if you take that number, you divide by one fourth, that's 100,000, maybe. I mean, again, really rough guesstimating here. But, um, if there's 100,000 people a year, and, you know, I don't know how long, I don't know how many years these were, these chipsets were used. But if they were used for, you know, four or five years, maybe. Um, you know, that's, you know, four or five hundred thousand people.
Um, and then, and then you, you would have to figure that even if, um, you know, even if it's, you know, five percent of users will say, I mean, it could be seeing it for the more. I'm not really sure. Um, but even five percent of that number is a pretty large number. Um, so, yeah, it's, it's really important. It might not have been a large enough number to actually make any manufacturer or a company designing these chipsets look into the problem, but it certainly was affecting a lot of people.
Um, not, not, not, you know, um, a lot of people in the scheme of the overall number, not so much in, in, in, in, uh, not so much. It's not so much that there was a lot of people as a percentage, because it probably wasn't really that many as a percentage.
But in terms of just wrong numbers, it was definitely a huge, huge number. Um, so, you know, when you have, when you have these bugs and nobody else was experiencing them.
Um, those bugs probably will never get fixed unless the sources are available and, and, and users can go developers on their free, you know, in their free time and, and, and hunt down the bugs and fix the bugs and produce a third party firmware.
Uh, and, um, you know, uh, and then, and then, and then only then, or is it going to end up those, those fixes are, are going to make it back into, um, you know, onto the billions of devices that are sold every, uh, well, I don't, I don't want to say every year, but onto the billions of devices that are sold.
Um, because they end up, those bug fixes end up going back into the main line, usually it's the main line kernel, if it's a case of like a kernel, um, like a driver type or hardware.
Um, but again, um, you know, this, this isn't necessarily just, you know, just a, there's, there's also other types of, um, it's important to have free software, not, not just at the, you know, kernel and, and the firmware level, but it's also important to have it at the, you know, application level as well.
Um, so the applications are running on your desktop or your phone. Um, because if you don't have, if you don't have those sources, then, you know, people can't go and fix the bugs.
Um, and you don't have that, uh, community yet, they can, they can, they can develop behind it. Um, I don't know if you're there. Um, still, if you have any questions.
Yeah, I'm still here.
Okay, if you have any questions, it might be a good time to ask. Um, otherwise I might go into some of the other, other interesting stuff in regards to this campaign.
Yeah, I'm back on 3G now, so it's at least I'm not disappearing every minute. Uh, yeah, uh, I told you earlier today via email that had been contacted today, uh, also via email by Josh gay from this FFF and he's in their licensing department.
He reiterated some of the things you said about. We're all already seeing some of the routers. If you, if you download, uh, the OEM firmware, all the sudden, uh, it changes the router.
So it's only certified firmware can be loaded. So you, you've had, you have some routers that you could load DDW RT on yesterday. So to speak. And now, uh, you upload the newest factory firmware.
And you're locked out of putting on third party firmware. So this doesn't go back to routers on the shelves now, but who knows how far back they're going to take this yet.
Yeah, the FCC is actually requiring the recertification of devices. So that's why you're seeing that. It's, you know, it's not, it's not just because they're, they're shipping new firmware. Um, on new devices, but they're actually.
Uh, they're even, even, or how do I say this, the boards, the routers that they designed, you know, three years ago, if they're still selling them and they want to continue to sell them, they have to get them recertified, which means they have to, they have to ship them now with updated firmware.
And it's not even, it's not, it's legally, they can't even market them. Um, from my understanding anyway.
And I, well, um, I'm trying to thought, but, uh, the other thing that he, that he talked about, um, he had got some communication or at least some analysis on these documents and was pretty sure that the FCC is going to define software defined radio as, you know, even like, well, DDW RT, let's face it.
It was, and the other open source, uh, firmware's were marketers. Hey, it's saying, you know, the, uh, Europe and Asia, they let them, they broadcast a slightly higher power than what we're allowed to hear.
So if you, if you replace the firmware with, uh, with open source, we can bump the power a little bit for you.
According to Josh, that, that matches the definition of software defined radio in their eyes.
Yeah, software defined radio isn't clearly defined, um, by the FCC, um, I guess in the FCC rules for my understanding.
Um, basically the, the EFF, I believe it was an EFF layer. What was the EFF layer? Um, anyway, so there's a few different layers who are, um, basically looked at, or looking at this code.
Um, or, I'm sorry, not the code, the rule changes. And, um, they basically said something to the effect of that it's, it's not really clearly defined, um, the, the, what software defined radio is even, but, um, it's probably pretty safe to assume that if it's not defined, they're going to, they're going to interpret it very, very broadly.
Um, and, and if they do, then basically everything is a software defined radio. Any of the modern Wi-Fi cards, because they're all, um, they're all, um, yeah, well, yeah.
I mean, basically, they're all software defined radios, um, at least in some part, um, the, see, there's, there's a, there's a five gigahertz issue.
Um, there's, I'm trying to think like what exactly here I wanted to say, but, um, basically, there, there's an issue with five gigahertz, um, specifically, um, as far as, so five gigahertz, basically, that spectrum is generally for, um, oh, how do I say this?
I think it's, I think the term is unlicensed to use, basically, it doesn't mean that your device doesn't have to be certified, um, it just means that, um, basically, anybody can use it.
Um, but the device still has to be certified, and there's a little part of this, um, spectrum that is not, that you're not allowed to use.
Um, unless they're, unless you use, uh, um, basically, there's, there's, there's, there's just piece of code, and what it does is it listens around airports.
And if that, um, if it detects that there's something, there's, there's this thing called Doppler radar, and it's, and it's, it's, it's, uh, for weather.
And if it detects this in use, then it won't use that part of the spectrum. Um, it used to be that that wasn't, um, you know, you weren't allowed to use that at all.
Um, but because of the real changes, now you can, um, as long as you comply with certain rules, as far as checking to make sure that that you're not around an airport basically, um, there's none of these other systems are in place.
Um, so that's part of actually the reason why we're running into, um, we're running into this problem. Um, is because they've, they've changed the rules for the better, but now they're concerned about how it's going to, um, and how it's impacting.
Uh, well, again, this is actually speculation this part. I want to make that clear, um, because there's a lot of people out there saying this is like, uh, basically they're saying it's, they're, they're making it as a statement, and it comes off as being factual, and it's, it's not, it's not, that does not appear to be the case from anybody, um, who has looked into this.
Uh, so if, if somebody has a statement from the FCC, um, you know, stating that the rules are in relation or a reaction to the Doppler radar, um, cases.
Um, you know, send us an email, um, because I, I'd love to, I'd love to hear it, um, because the FCC has been, um, when we, when we've asked the FCC or, and others have asked the FCC, uh, the FCC has kind of, um, double, I guess the term would be double, double talk, double, double speak, something like that.
The reason I'm saying is they say one thing, and then if you read into it, the actual, the actual result of what they're saying is, um, that everything's gonna have to be locked down.
Um, they'll say, they'll say that, um, they'll say that, you know, uh, we're not requiring, you know, devices to be locked down, um, or something that affect, but then they say, but you have to comply.
Um, you know, with these rules and, um, the only way that manufacturers can really comply with them is the lock the router's down.
So it's, it's very, it's really kind of humorous.
Um, there might be some other ways to comply with the rules possibly, but, you know, there, there's a whole bunch of, like, clarification like the FCC would have to do, and, um, you know, um, like what, what exactly is acceptable.
Um, I guess is what it comes on to, and, um, if you actually look at their, uh, what they're actually asking manufacturers during the certification process, the question explicitly asks of what are they doing to prevent loading a third party, uh, firmware such as the WRT.
Um, that's almost an exact quote there.
Oh, it, it's really, really scary.
Um, you know, uh, they've already made the assumption that the only way that a company can even come into compliance with, with these rules is by, uh, locking down the devices, um, which, which is a, you know, it's a very, I think is a very fair, um, assessment of, of the, the real world situation that we're in right now.
And because of, again, also, the, the results of what we're actually seeing here, um, I think penguin with, uh, Liberty CMC and, um, and, and the routers that, that we're, we're looking at and we're testing and, and we're seeing these from more changes, um, purely from more changes.
Um, so it's, it's, yeah, it's a big issue. And, and these routers, um, these routers, uh, this is what we're seeing it with, um, more specifically, but, um, you know, in theory, it should, it should apply to, you know, pretty much anything, anything, um, with the, with a software defined radio.
Um, I, uh, can, I should, I should be careful. Anything with a software defined, a modern, um, Wi-Fi chip, uh, that's using a software defined radio. Um, it's possible that it maybe won't completely, won't be necessary with, I guess, I guess I, again, I'm not, I'm not, um, I'm not, um, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not one of the engineers. I'm not one of the, I have a computer science background, but I'm not, I'm not one of the engineers, um, Lewis and Adrian would probably be able to better respond to these.
Some of these questions or, um, clarify some of this, but, um, I, I believe that you might be okay if it's in, like, an 802-11-N2.4 gigahertz card. Um, I'm not entirely sure if those actually require recertification or not, but anything with, like, I guess, basically, on the five gigahertz spectrum would require recertification. Um, there's also some other things that, you know, people should be aware of. The, the rules, um, there's, there's different sets of rules. Um, and I'm not, I'm not, when I'm talking, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not,
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not talking about the specific set of proposed rules, even I'm talking more broadly about what's going on. Um, the, the proposed rules, though, um, are a problem. And, um, regardless, um, you can, you can go to the WW, uh, WW, save Wi-Fi.org.
You can read up on the details. Um, the, the, the, the page that it will direct you to is going to be basically more, uh, a non technical, um, you know, explanation of the problem, but you can actually go on and you can read much, much, much more in depth, um, as far as, you know, what the rules actually say specifically, and, um, if you get on the archive, um, the mailing list archives for a save Wi-Fi, um, that has been set up.
You can also actually go back and read all the same, uh, the same stuff I'm spattering off here. Um, and you can, you know, you can see, oh, it was an EFF lawyer or, you know, you can see it was, um, free software conservancy lawyer or you can see, um, you know, that it was Adrian Lewis, or I'm sorry, not Adrian Lewis, Adrian that said something or Lewis that said something, those, those are two, um, two software developers that used to work at Qualcomm, um, or you can see, um, you know, um, the free software foundation, um, Josh, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
uh, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh... Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
I was just going to impact us.
What do we need to say?
How are we going to fight this?
And I've been looking at it more from an angle of, OK,
well, I'm seeing this actually impacting us
in the real world.
So it's quite an interesting group of people who have been,
I'd say this probably about a dozen, maybe a dozen people
who have really been following for about a month
before this campaign even started just working
on figuring out exactly what the details are.
And trying to get clarification from FCC.
And there's a lot of misinformation and errors
that are floating about, both because the FCC
has extended the deadline because of, basically,
their servers where they were taking it down
in the middle of the open comment period.
And they extended it at all.
It's, I guess, there's different roles,
sets of roles that are basically up for, like, review
or there might be.
And they're all, basically, were extended
until October 9, I believe it was.
And then if they were ending during that comment period,
or I'm sorry, during that server downtime, sorry.
But because of the work we did, the FCC, in requesting
an extension, the FCC, well, they did require,
they did extend the comment period
so people can comment.
So there's, let's see, I believe it was about a month
that they extended it.
So it's October now.
So you don't have, I mean, you don't want to wait.
That's the one thing you don't want to do.
You don't want to wait.
Spend some time revealing it.
How is this going to impact you and send your comments
into the FCC?
The more information that you have, the better your comment.
I'm sorry, let me rephrase this.
The citing specific instances is better than just sending
in a comment that says, oh, this is going to affect me
because I use OpenWRT or something like that.
That's not as useful.
It's not to say it's not useful, especially
because there are, there's something
that the FCC is required to do.
And it's something, it's basically,
they're supposed to do an evaluation of the impact
that any world changes they're going to have.
And they've basically kind of written it off.
And they basically said that, oh, this isn't going
to have any impact.
Well, that's not really true.
So the more people who basically speak up,
they should show in theory if it ends up in a court
or something that, hey, wait a minute, there really
are a lot of people who are affected.
And they didn't really do their analysis properly
or something to that effect.
But again, the ones that the FCC is really
going to be looking at, it would probably be a court of law
that actually looked at the fact that they didn't do the analysis
properly or something to that effect, not the FCC.
But we don't want it to come down to that, of course,
because if you actually have to take something
in court, it's an act of a lot harder to do
and much more expensive.
And who knows if we could even come up with the funds
to do that or so on.
So yeah, you need to send in good comments.
The best comments you can.
Look up, see what impact it'll have on you.
And if you're a company, it sells routers with a third party
firmware.
And you're a downstream of the actual manufacturer.
And you might not be selling 100,000 units a year.
You might just be selling maybe a couple thousand units a year.
How is this going to affect you?
Or maybe you sell Wi-Fi.
You use a third party firmware to sell internet access
to your customers.
Or maybe you use it as a shop that has free Wi-Fi access.
How is that going to impact you?
If you can't load third party firmware anymore,
you won't be able to provide your customers
for the internet access.
At least you won't be able to.
Well, I don't know if you could go that far.
But I think people get the idea that it will prevent things,
for example, here's a good example of what I'm talking about.
So there are components within third party
firmwares that can be enabled.
And I'm sure many people have seen this.
Where you go into a McDonald's or you go into any kind of cafe.
When you get on the Wi-Fi, it comes up with a message
saying terms and conditions.
And basically says you won't do anything illegal.
And you click accept.
I accept, right?
Well, those conditions are provided by a component that
isn't going to be in your off-the-shelf,
generally speaking anyway, off-the-shelf firm factory firmware.
That's something that has probably been added by maybe even
if you did get that as a feature with the router,
it probably was added by somebody, some company,
some smaller company that is a downstream of the major manufacturer.
They wouldn't be allowed to do that anymore.
They would sell that product.
Because it would have to be certified.
And then it would have to be, they have to do exactly.
They would definitely have to have it certified.
Oh, they'd have to have the firmware assigned.
So yeah, all of this stuff is very important.
And again, the firmware signing has
to do with the fact that if you want to comply basically
with the role so that end user can't control it,
the only thing that you can flash are versions of the firmware
without the features that would enable you
to use the radio in an unauthorized way.
So there's actually some people are saying things like,
oh, it doesn't really matter because I'm just going
to hack around it.
Well, yeah, this is actually true.
You can actually hack around this stuff right now,
because it's a, these locks are not,
it's not mandated that these locks basically
were any of the signature checking be done in hardware.
So it actually, especially kind of humorous,
because it means that the FCC won't really gain anything
from doing this.
You're, anybody who intentionally goes out of the way,
and this is not something you can easily do anyway,
because the, the firmwares that are causing the problems
are by commercial entities, which have already been fined,
or at least it appears to be.
That's, again, this is, this is more speculation
as far as this is, this is why they're doing it.
So I don't know that with certainty
and people who are saying otherwise
are basically telling what they're talking about.
They're basically just citing speculation as fact.
So it's being done at a software level,
and that will comply.
But you can get $100 for the specialized equipment,
and you can flash the chips directly.
And when you do this, you would be breaking the law.
You'd be breaking the rules, the FCC rules.
And as an end user, you can actually
be fined up to $20,000 if they catch you.
So as well as manufacturers.
So it's really important that we change these rules.
We get them over turned.
And the proposed rules for that matter,
we get them curtailed so that they don't go into effect at all.
What's really scary, though, is actually,
there's actually two things.
One, well, the one is that they, right now,
this is a software thing, but what's the stop the FCC
from going and saying they have to adopt Intel's technology,
which basically it's a hardware lock.
And it's already in all modern Intel CPUs.
And I believe there might be something in AMD,
but yeah, I know AMD is also a problem in any event,
let's put it this way.
But basically, what this technology wasn't designed,
this is an interesting tidbit from being, you know,
talking to all the different engineers and people.
But basically, the technology is not designed.
Intel's technology for locking,
and signature checking and hardware is not specific
to XAD-6 chips.
It can actually be used on other platforms.
So there's nothing to stop the FCC
from coming in tomorrow and saying,
oh, well, we can get around this.
So you gotta do this in hardware now.
And that's the scary thing.
It's done in hardware, you're not gonna be able to,
you know, just get $100 with a specialized equipment
and flash the trip directly,
because you could, I mean, you could do that,
but it's not gonna work,
because if it's not a hardware level,
then all of a sudden, when you boot the device
after you flash it, it won't boot,
because it's checking, it's not gonna be Intel's signature
or Intel's key, it's not gonna be signed
with Intel's key in other words.
So it's just not gonna boot.
So, you know, they can really go,
they can go to that extreme and do that.
And that's really the only way that this would even
really have the impact that the FCC wants,
or is attempting to get from having this level of control.
But there's actually some more interesting,
you know, perspective, you can take this,
look at it from.
And what is security?
But people really don't understand that it's not just
a source code, like, being able to test and modify
the source code and being able to flash their devices,
that is gonna lead to security improvements,
and fixes that you won't otherwise get.
I mean, we all know that manufacturers are horrible
when it comes to security,
and providing updated frameworks and things like that
that fix bugs, and then those bugs are often,
you know, fixed by, they're not fixed by manufacturers,
they're fixed by somebody else,
and the manufacturers integrate the patch.
And when, and if there's a lot of negative publicity
about it, and that's the extent of it usually,
but what's scary is, there's only a handful of companies
that are really manufacturing or designing,
pretty much any type of device.
If you end up with a situation
where the only people who can, you know,
sign these farmwares are basically a manufacturer,
so they're pretty many manufacturers,
then you're in a situation where it becomes much, much easier
to add backdoors and things of that nature.
Now, you might say, oh, that's paranoia.
Okay, okay, you're right.
It might be a little bit of paranoia,
but the problem is we've already seen, you know,
the NSA weakening encryption algorithms
or at least try to, we already know
that there's multiple governments that are,
it's not just, and it's not just governments,
but there's multiple different criminal organizations
and corporations for that matter
that have certain interests in, you know,
having these backdoors.
So this could really, really become a really serious issue.
We, oh, and we already know that NSA has,
then because of, I believe it was a note in links, leaks,
we already know that NSA is installing backdoors in routers.
We already know this.
So it's isn't that part of it, it's not really speculation,
and we already know that NSA is weakened,
you know, weakened algorithms that were made to attempt to,
and I guess they've actually got implemented too
from my understanding, not across the board,
but in certain, I guess certain devices by RCA,
RSA, I think it was RSA, anyway.
So it's, this is a really, really dangerous thing.
I'm gonna repeat the website, it's www.savewifi.org.
Our goal is to get people to send in comments to the FCC,
to tell them to stop with this effort
to ban basically third-party firmwares.
They're basically mandating locks,
that manufacturer's implement locks onto their firmware
so that you can't install third-party firmwares.
www.savewifi.org.
Make sure you do enter .org,
because if you don't, you will get to a totally different site
and be wondering what is going on.
What else is there?
Well, one thing.
Yeah, good.
Well, and I guess you said that you've been,
I guess, recently on Linux for the rest of us,
and I heard you a week ago on the Linux link tech show.
So folks, you should definitely listen,
find those podcasts and listen to when Chris was on.
Now, one thing that you brought up on the comments,
you mentioned early on,
you mentioned something that you might be making it easier
for people to comment.
And the one thing that I've heard is,
we really don't want to send in copied boilerplate comments
like the contact your congressman and you plug in your state
and it finds your congressman and you plug in your email
and congressman gets 1,000 copies of the same state.
Yeah.
Apparently the FCC will ignore those,
so you really need to do individualized comments.
Yeah, so like I was saying,
it's definitely trying to individualize comments.
We actually don't have a template letter.
We actually trying to work on one,
but I don't, we obviously don't want people
to send in a template letter.
The reason that you, we want as many people
to send in tell the FCC that they're affected
is because the more people that comment,
the better the argument is if it ever ends up in court
because one of the problems is that the FCC
hasn't really done a proper analysis as they're supposed to
as they're required to buy a law.
They're not following their own rules.
So that's really why.
We need as many people as possible to send in comments.
But yeah, the comments really, if at all possible,
try and cite example, cite sources for your information.
If you say, you know, it's gonna cause a security issue,
well, okay, can you cite an example of that security issue?
Because if you don't, it's gonna be more or less
ignored by the FCC as, yeah, as 51, 50 is, thank.
Now, I know that you've got the EFF on board
and other organizations that typically we count
on to bring these issues, type of issues to our pitch.
Have you made any contacts in the, from other hardware
manufacturers?
Well, not so much.
Yeah, these like Red Hat or Canonical,
which are very invested in Linux on the desktop
and then other companies that internally use Linux
like Google, Twitter and Facebook.
Yeah, so we actually haven't really tried to reach out
to any of these, those particular types of entities.
We've tried to focus more, again, there's more,
there's more, there's not enough people, actually,
working on the campaign.
So it's, I've done most of the publicity
for the campaign, which is really sad
because I am not necessarily the best person.
You know, I don't have all the contacts
that, you know, somebody who is, you know,
does this for, you know, maybe, I don't know,
living or, you know, more of a marketing type of person
might have.
So, but one of the, we are, we are definitely in contact
with like, for example, we're in contact
with one of the largest manufacturers of routers
and like I said, they basically,
they haven't said anything publicly,
just to clarify this.
So again, I don't even know exactly who it was,
which manufacturer, because it's, again, like I said,
I'm not the only one working on this campaign.
There's, there's another people and the person,
I don't even remember who it was, who said that,
but it was somebody who was, who works in the industry.
I believe, not like 99% confident.
It was somebody who actually does like design,
like engineering or something, something like that.
Or maybe, maybe, where maybe there might be a manager
or something like Qualcomm or some other similar company,
but there's somebody in the industry is the impression
that I might, what I recall from the impression
that I had from who it was.
And this was all before, let's see, I'm trying to think,
yeah, this was I think before, it really got publicity.
So it wasn't like somewhere in a person or anything like that.
It was somebody who was, we specifically,
eye-contacted or specifically,
or somebody that was added based on another person,
another credible, basically, it was all credible,
credible information, nothing got slipped in
on us by accident here, with that particular statement
that somebody was working on.
Yeah, so, www.savewifi.org, please go there,
send us comments, send the FCC comments.
You can get, there's also a mailing list
if anybody's interested.
Try, if you do get on the mailing list,
please try not to send us stuff that's
add too much garbage and fodder to the mailing list
because we're actually, if you're actually gonna get involved,
stuff like, oh, eye-contacted, X, Y, Z,
about the issue, well, that's great, we want that.
But if you're gonna have a discussion
about sending 10 emails about stuff that,
oh, I don't know, I guess we've already discussed
or is, you know, you're gonna want to argue about,
you want to argue about, you know,
what the meaning of something is or what approach we should take.
That's not really, that's not really,
I wanna say that's not really welcomed.
It's not really gonna be useful,
or it's not gonna really be helpful.
I guess it's the best way to put it.
There's certain stuff that we're gonna do,
and it's gonna be at a later date right now,
or really focused on the proposed rules
and getting people to comment on those.
We'll continue with this campaign much, much farther out.
We're gonna be doing, we're gonna be doing,
trying to get as much publicity this month as possible.
And getting people to send in those comments,
there's gonna be, there's actually
two different comments periods.
There's the initial comment period,
which is, basically you haven't told,
basically the end of the month, maybe a little bit longer,
but early October, the first comment period ends,
and then there's gonna be another comment period
where people can't send in more responses, I guess,
to other commenters, or something that sounds like to me.
I'm not entirely sure of the details on that,
but if you have some reason to ask more information,
you can definitely ask on the mailing us.
And again, that's all linked from the SaveWiFi.org site.
Basically, right now SaveWiFi.org is linked to
a library plan, a library plan if we move on,
no, is basically, it's a conference
held by the free software foundation every year,
and the, on free software,
and they're basically providing the resources
for the server and the Wiki.
And there's also the Purple Foundation,
PRPL, that is hosting the mailing list.
So, yeah, there's a few different other groups in there
that I also would like to just mention.
People aren't familiar with them.
It's certainly groups are, yeah, groups, basically,
that people might want to look into just for, you know,
just for the sake of, hey, these guys are doing a lot of work,
and, you know, it's, it's always nice to,
and nice to hear, you know, to be appreciated,
I guess, I guess is what it comes down to.
So, yeah.
Yeah, oh, shit, let me bring up my list of points.
I had it right there in my mind.
Oh, yeah, that, that's just something I haven't heard
anybody say on the topic, but let's face it,
when you, some people might, out there might be saying,
well, okay, I, I, I lose the use of Linux on my Wi-Fi laptop.
You know, I can, I can still build desktop and use it,
but let's face it, they're not,
industry is not gonna build separate UEFI slash biosis
for laptops and desktops.
So, if it, you know, even if you're gonna,
if, even if you're buying computer without Wi-Fi attached,
you're still gonna come under the same restrictions.
And the other thing, I mean, it would be part,
I would think, on the desktop,
first you would have to have something
that would keep you from installing,
something besides the OEM operating system,
and then the both Apple Microsoft would have to agree
to put in something certification for any program
that gets installed on their operating systems.
In other words, you wouldn't be able to install anything
if you can come from their app store.
Yeah, I, you know, it's kind of funny.
People, people think it won't affect desktops,
but that's, that's really, that's probably both
those companies might welcome that.
This is, this is gonna, yeah, they would,
Microsoft and Apple certainly will.
No, there's, this is definitely gonna affect desktops.
I can already name a number of desktops
that have integrated Wi-Fi.
Most of them, more recent miniature, smaller desktop computers,
I'm not talking about the, you know,
things like the Raspberry Pi or Banana Pi or any of those.
I'm talking about, I mean, those, yes,
those would definitely be affected.
But the, I'm talking about like Intel desktop systems.
I'm talking about Intel with, you know, Intel i3
and Intel i5 CPUs.
These systems are now shipping,
most of them are shipping with integrated Wi-Fi.
So I don't see any, again, I'm not,
I'm not really seeing how that, again,
these, in theory, these roles should affect
those systems as well.
And even, even if the FCEC wasn't coming down
on manufacturers yet, there's nothing,
with the world change, there's nothing,
there's nothing to stop them from coming down
on manufacturers for that.
And I'm also curious, what's to stop,
what's to stop you from using like a,
sticking in a USB Wi-Fi down goal?
So like, I don't know, it just seems,
it seems, I don't know, it just seems like,
you, even if it doesn't have Wi-Fi integrated,
even if it doesn't have a, many PCIe current slot,
or an M2 card slot, you know, where, you know, Wi-Fi,
an internal Wi-Fi chip might usually go.
I don't know, it seems like,
it seems like they could maybe even require,
I mean, I don't know, it gets complicated
because the FCC doesn't actually,
well, the FCC has, they've authority over the rules,
but as far as Wi-Fi is concerned,
but they also certify devices that are not,
they don't have Wi-Fi in them.
So I'm not, I'm not even entirely sure,
I guess they can maybe, maybe they could even, you know,
force it upon companies that don't have any Wi-Fi chips
internally, or even slots for that matter for them.
But again, it's, I don't know,
it's something that's, that's kind of like,
we just don't know, we don't have enough information
and the FCC hasn't exactly, you know, been clear.
They've kind of used double speak
when people will ask them about these issues.
So they, you know, they'll say one thing,
and then if you actually think about it for a moment,
if you understand what that means in practice,
you'll realize, you'll realize it's double speak.
If you're not, you know, if you don't understand
what's going on behind the scenes,
you might think, oh, it's not an issue,
but unfortunately, people who should,
I feel, should have known better.
I'm particular major publications
that have done written articles about it
have basically said stuff to the fact of,
oh, it's, it's being blown out of proportion
by the, say, Wi-Fi campaign.
It's not blown out of proportion,
not by a long shot.
The people you're quoting, we're not involved
in the campaign, but you, yeah, you got a quote from,
you may have gotten a quote from people
that work at Call of Comm,
or you may have gotten a quote from somebody who, you know,
worked at the FCC, but if you don't understand
what it is of practical implications,
not just what, you know, the surface,
you know, what's happening on the surface,
but then, yeah, you can definitely read into it
saying it's not an issue, but it is.
It is an issue.
Because if you look at what's going on in practice,
and other in association, in addition to other comments
that enroll our certifications stuff
that, that manufacturers will have to do
for certification, you'll realize
that it's a major issue.
See here, yeah, so, oh, and yeah, by the way,
some of these quotes that have been quoted by people
at like Qualcomm, for example,
Qualcomm, there's people at Qualcomm
who are involved and multiple X Qualcomm employees
who actually worked on the firmware for the Wi-Fi chips.
You're not, you can, there's a lot of people
at work at these companies, so just because you call up
their PR department or something,
and somebody says something isn't necessarily mean,
it's reliable information.
And that's basically what's going on.
The people who have basically, at best,
maybe somebody from Qualcomm or some other organization
has gone and they read a little bit of the,
say, Wi-Fi campaign, but they didn't read enough into it
to actually understand that we're not just talking about,
we're not just talking about what the rules say,
because what the rules say and how companies
are basically going to have to react
are two different things.
Technically speaking, yeah, sure,
maybe a company could come out, you know,
some chipset, company design chipsets
could come out with a product that complied with the rules.
But you have to understand that there's only a few companies
that are even designing chipsets,
so, and they're all doing it in software,
and they're not going to go back,
because if they go back to the way they were doing it before,
where it's in hardware, it's going to increase the cost,
which is going to make their product uncompetitive,
which means nobody's going to use it.
You know, no company is going to implement
that particular chipset, so it's just not happening.
It's the way it's going to end up going down
is we're going to have software locks all over the place,
and maybe hardware locks down the road,
if things keep going the way they're currently going,
because we already know the technology exists,
we've got confirmation that it's licensed,
or it's designed such where it could be licensed out,
and tells God the technology,
and tells God it such that it can be licensed out,
if they so chose to.
I don't know if they are licensing it out yet at this point,
but why wouldn't they, right?
If the FCC decides that this isn't good enough,
which the software locks aren't, not really,
then the solve the problem,
then, but it will have a detrimental impact on users,
regardless, so, and as far as,
actually, it's going to have a detrimental effect
on users anyway, because even,
like for example, with computers,
now I'm thinking about the routers mostly,
and that's where the software locks
are clearly going to be used,
but if you're talking about computers,
they've already got the locks on them,
and it's just a matter of flipping a bit,
saying, okay, well, we're only going to,
we're going to solve this problem by only allowing,
you know, Microsoft Windows to be installed on these systems.
That's an easy bit to flip.
It's probably the easiest bit to flip,
because it's already there.
It's already in upstream reference designs
that companies are, you know,
using to build their product.
So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if we,
I haven't personally seen any laptops or desktops
at this point, which have had these bits flipped,
but we're also not,
so again, I'm going to repeat where I'm coming from,
how I'm looking at this from.
I'm the CEO of Think Penguin, I think I said that,
but nonetheless,
and we work on a router product,
and we work on, well, we work on all sorts of products,
but the most obvious clear examples
that we're talking about here are the router
and laptops and desktops.
So, the laptops and desktops that we're currently selling
are not, oh, actually, I shouldn't quite say that.
Let's see, I think they actually do have the locks.
No, I'm sorry, they do actually have the locks.
So, now, they're not enabled.
Yeah, I guess, I guess the best way to put it is,
they're not enabled in our products,
but the locks are already, no wait a minute,
I'm sorry, they're our locks in our products, actually,
in our laptop products.
So, let's go back.
There's something called management engine firmware,
and I hope I can just screw that up
for like the dozenth time now.
But basically, what this is,
is it's a component of Intel CPUs, I guess,
and basically, if you,
if you want 100% free software of laptop,
you can't get it today.
You can get close to it with any,
basically all our products get as close as you can get to freedom.
But, with the laptops, we're basically being held hostage
by Intel, and one of the,
one of the, in all of the newer Intel,
and I'm talking about stuff from the last couple of years,
not just the most recent Sky Lake or Broadwell stuff, even,
but they have this Intel firmware management engine,
and this is basically signed bit of a binary,
signed bit of a binary,
and it's checked by hardware,
and if you were to try and reverse engineer it,
and you were to produce code for it,
and you were to flash it onto this chip,
that software wouldn't run because of this lock,
this signature checking.
So, it's, yeah, this stuff is already,
it's already in the products that we're buying,
and it can easily be extended to other devices,
and now, in the case of this,
in this particular example, it affects the BIOS,
but other parts of this, these systems,
relating to UEFI and secure boot and similar systems,
they're also already in our systems.
So, it is, while manufacturers may not be forcing,
forcing you to use only Windows,
they could easily do so.
They could easily decide tomorrow,
with a flip of a switch, with 10 minutes worth of time
and effort to change their firmware,
that's no longer the case,
and you would not be able to install,
third-party operating systems or third-party firmwares
on your devices.
You wanna say anything, Bob?
Well, like I said, my earlier thing was,
you'd also have to, and I'm sure they would be happy to do it.
You'd have to get Apple and Microsoft
to lock down their operating systems,
where you could no longer install a software
that didn't have a certificate along with it,
so to keep somebody from writing some little program,
to access the wires and change the parameters.
Yeah, there's, it's actually interesting,
because I think we're already using,
let's see, I'm trying to think,
I think there's actually some,
at least some are most systems already,
where you actually have to,
so it's interesting,
because distributions are getting signed,
with a key by Microsoft.
So, we actually already are under,
I wanna say we're already under the groups of Microsoft,
but I'm having somebody, Bob here,
who's a developer for Liberty MC,
he's shaking his head,
so there's probably,
there might be something slightly wrong,
he often over reacts to some of the stuff that I say,
that's not quite 100% right,
but there may already be,
there's already, there's already,
there's already, let me put it this way,
there's already issues,
even if my statement wasn't quite right.
So, and Bob, if you wanna chime in here,
I'm sure the people on the show would love to hear you.
Nope, he's not.
Okay, well, I tried.
So.
Well, like one thing you mentioned,
I mean, I guess it could be possible,
your major distributions,
like Ubuntu, they could get certification,
though I'm certain at some point,
right, they're gonna mandate a code review,
so only the people,
the distributions with deep pockets,
like say, Fedorg or RedHatter,
or Ubuntu would ever be able to pass that,
so that would be the end of any group or derivative distributions,
but what you'd have to do is lock down the distributions
so that you couldn't install any software
that's not in the repository,
and you wouldn't be able to,
as you mentioned on Tilt,
you wouldn't be able to compile your own software.
I don't know, yeah, like I said,
I'm not really sure how far they're,
they're, you know, I mean,
it seems like really hard for me to fathom,
like this is, these roles are actually,
like extending that to this level of like control,
but like, so here's the thing,
I don't know,
I'm not really sure how they,
there's ways that you could potentially implement,
you know, locking of parameter data to control the radio,
without actually locking down devices,
and part of the problem is that companies aren't gonna wanna implement it,
and the FCC can't mandate like how they go about doing this,
because it's beyond their authority,
so ultimately, like we're in a situation where,
okay, they have to lock the devices down,
and that's the way they're gonna do it,
because that's kind of the only way that it is gonna work.
So, yeah, I mean, I don't know like you'd even be able to get
short of, you know, a short of more direct involvement
with a particular manufacturer,
I don't know that you'd even be able to get,
like up into, you know, signed for a laptop.
Like, I mean, we can probably deal with that problem,
but like if you were to try and install it on like an HP machine,
for example, you probably wouldn't be able to do it,
because HP's not, I mean, HP doesn't have any interests,
and you know, targeting that particular part of the market.
If they were interested, they would have already done it.
So, I mean, obviously they've got it on servers and things like that,
so in those areas, they probably would,
but I'm talking about like, you know,
just their regular desktops and laptops.
Maybe Dell, maybe Dell would do it,
because they do have a system work too.
I don't know, maybe they'll just get out of the market,
you know, it just, I think it's too much trouble.
I don't know, you know, I can tell you right now
that there's not a significant,
there's one of the problems with running a company
and selling to the market is that there's a lot of people running
Linux and GNU and free software,
but very few people are actually buying hardware,
specifically for it, unless they're forced to.
And that's a problem, because it doesn't give companies
incentives to properly support devices,
and people kind of have this perception that,
you know, you can go out and buy anything and install Ubuntu
and it's just gonna work, and it's not really true,
but nonetheless, people have this perception
and at the end of the day, we have people doing that in practice.
So, you know, things won't work right and so on,
but, you know, they kind of, you know,
they mess about in whatever, maybe they'll get a,
they'll get a Wi-Fi card to replace whatever's internally,
that doesn't work with Ubuntu or whatever.
But, again, at the end of the day, you know,
if you're buying systems from, you know,
HP or Dell or whoever, who don't really cater to the market,
and they might do it for publicity reasons like Dell,
for example, but they really don't care.
They're obviously not doing it for money,
because the money, they're not making enough money off of it.
So, yeah, I mean, it's a scary situation.
Their most likely scenario is that companies
will just lock, lock stuff down,
because they have no interest in selling you a Windows upgrade
or even if they did, they can still, they can sign that.
So, if they sign it, then, you know,
they're gonna make money off it.
But, they're not gonna make money off of selling you
Ubuntu, because they're not selling Ubuntu.
Are you sure you don't wanna get in on the conversation here?
To say hi.
Well, you're asking, the one bright spot I've seen,
and it's not well enough document for my taste,
is that R's Technica article that I sent you earlier this week.
And essentially, it's like you said,
you know, FCC is making the rules,
and if open source, and as you mentioned,
in consequence, you know,
they're just gonna throw up their hands.
I mean, there's a couple places in this article
that it implies that FCC on the route,
at least on the router side,
that, you know, they're saying this is not what we intended
for you guys to just chuck out open source entirely.
We would like it to be responsible,
and put radios in these things that can't be, you know,
can't be affected by software.
That would be, you know, you know,
that it seems like, and I'll put this in the show notes,
folks, but there's a couple,
there's a couple big, bold headings,
ones unintended consequences,
and the other one is FCC,
Colin, open source won't be banned.
Yeah, it's, you know, but,
some of these articles really,
it's almost like somebody has an intent
to undermine the campaign.
I'm just amazed, because if you actually read the article
on that one specifically,
I believe that you're referring to,
it even says, there's even quotes that this is an issue.
Like, it even said that people eat quoting,
even say this is an issue.
So it's kind of like, okay, wait a minute.
On the one hand, you're saying they're not gonna be
an open source software,
then you get to the bottom of the article,
and it's like, well, wait a minute.
Even the people you're quoting are saying
that this is a major issue.
Hello.
Yeah, I mean, if you can believe the quote,
because it's interpreted,
it attributes a quote to the commission,
not to any particular spoken or individual.
You know, the paraphrase says,
yeah, we're fine with DDWRT.
As long as it can't modify the parameters of the radio.
So actually, this is interesting.
Actually, a point to bring up.
So there's nothing to say that somebody couldn't ship
a router with DDWRT and get it certified.
It just would only be able to run that particular version.
So it's not, yeah, it gets complicated.
Very quickly.
So in theory, the FCC is sort of,
or that statement is sort of right.
Yeah, they don't ban,
they're not really banning open source software,
but in practice, there's actually a number of issues
with that if you're trying to get certified.
So let's say the device is certified
and it's running DDWRT.
Well, it's actually really complicated
because there's actually DDWRT,
it might already be violating licenses,
but there's a lot of companies
that are violating licenses as well.
I should also point out all over the place.
But some of these licenses actually,
especially more modern licenses,
like the GPL version three as an example,
they prohibit something called tivalization
and tivalization basically is when you walk down a device.
It might be running free software.
Oh, Bob has pointed something out to me.
It was very interesting too.
Certification is apparently $50,000.
I don't, are you sure?
$1,000, well, each time it's $10,000.
I could've sworn that certification wasn't that expensive.
I'm not 100% sure, that's right.
But Bob is saying it's-
That's because these in other,
each time you have this submit an application.
Do you want to come over here and say it?
No, I don't.
Okay, I guess basically he's saying it's something
to the effect of, it's not just the certification,
but it's the overall cost for one router.
I wasn't aware of that.
When I've looked into it, it was maybe set five to 10,000,
but that wasn't everything as far as the devices
that we were specifically talking about.
Anyway, now I lost my share of thought.
Well, I thought when this first came out a year ago,
I bought a Buffalo router that was supposed to have
DDWRT is the operating system by default.
And what I got was like,
are you dumber than a third-grader interface?
And I said, what is this?
Because I've had Buffalo routers before
with DDWRT and had been very impressed with the buttons.
And when this came to light, these new FCC regulations,
I thought, oh, okay, that must have happened
between the listing on new egg
and me getting the router, this has happened.
I don't know.
I don't know if that's actually what happened or not.
So the rule, I guess the rule for past last year
and they're coming into effect now.
So I don't know, maybe it was a reaction,
maybe it was a reaction in preparation
for the real changes.
I do believe though that new egg has advertised routers
as supporting DDWRT, not coming with DDWRT.
So those routers presumably won't be able
to flash DDWRT on them anymore.
Because they're not obviously,
they're not certified with DDWRT,
they're certified with some other firmware
and users are just able to,
or we're able to flash some with DDWRT.
There are routers that are shipping with DDWRT
from smaller companies.
I know there's a couple companies in the,
I know while I was looking at one company in the UK,
for example, this is something else to point out
if any of your listeners are listening around the world,
these worlds are not just gonna be effect US customers,
I mean people in the US,
they're actually similar rules proposed,
we're going to be proposed in Canada and Europe as well.
So this is a worldwide issue.
Chances are, and even if you weren't,
even if that wasn't the case,
the rules that are being acquired in the US
are likely to affect people outside the US,
because when a company does something
and they implement locks and things,
what's, why would they not implement locks elsewhere?
They often have an incentive to do so
as it even without the rules.
So there's a good chance like companies
will already start implementing locks in routers,
in other devices, even if they don't have to,
in other countries where they sell those,
a product with a similar firmware.
And you have to understand to you like,
a lot of the software that like,
from where is that are actually shipped by manufacturers
are based on a lot of the same underlying code.
So it's not even,
so if like one company implements
the capability to lock a device, for example,
well that code ends up in,
often ends up in other,
in basically like,
I kind of want to say like a stock firmware,
and then it's used by other,
I'm sorry, not stock firmware,
but like a generic firmware,
and that ends up getting used by other companies.
So it just, it becomes just a flip of a switch.
It becomes very easy to start doing stuff
that the company maybe not,
didn't really have an incentive,
or maybe they just didn't have the,
they didn't have the,
they weren't gonna go out of their way to lock a device,
but now that they can, they're going to,
it's basically what it comes down to.
They don't want their customer's flashing third party
frameworks because you potentially, for example,
will break the device,
and that'll increase support costs and everything else.
And so they'll just lock the device for that reason.
And that's just a good example of why one might do it.
Not everybody's going to do it.
If they're advertising, you know,
DDWRT, for example, or Liberty CMC,
or OpenWRT, or any of these third party frameworks,
they might not, you know,
they might not have that interest in Europe right now.
So maybe they will leave it unlocked,
but it will certainly reduce the number of routers
that you can flash,
even if it weren't,
even if similar worlds weren't going to come to effect
in another parts of the world.
But again, they are,
we already know there's,
we already have,
I'm not quite sure how to phrase this,
but basically we have the,
I guess we have like basically the pro,
it's hard for me to put this in words
because there's basically,
there's a set of,
I want to say legislation,
we're just going to use that term
just because it's easy for people to understand.
And for me to use that term,
but basically there's already legislation
that we can refer to
that you can actually,
I guess, look into.
I don't, I can't quote it on the error here,
but you can go to savewifi.org,
you might be able to find it on our Wiki if you can't,
you can definitely find it
in the mailing list archive.
So you can actually go and find the Canadian,
basically equivalent regulation,
and you can go and find the European equivalent regulation.
I believe there's, it was actually,
or one of these days that passed
or coming up real soon is,
basically there's a,
I guess there's, there's a,
there's a physical, physical police,
where they're gonna hold a meeting of some kind,
and I know one of the people on the,
the savewifi mailing list
is going to be an attendance at that meeting.
I don't believe anybody else responded saying
they were also going to be at that meeting,
but my understanding is that some of these topics
are going to be discussed.
It's not just specifically to these roles,
but that we're referring,
but a lot of other issues as well.
And during that meeting, I guess they're gonna,
they're gonna be discussing some of this.
So it's not something that's,
oh, we don't know if it's coming
or it might come or speculating,
this is stuff we know is coming,
it's already, it's already public knowledge,
if you look into it further.
We're not actually, right now,
we're understanding, yes.
We're reading all these.
Well, my understanding, Chris,
we're reading all these articles is pretty much
anytime RSCC passes a new rule,
pretty much can it in Europe,
just mirror whatever it is
and oftentimes Asia and like we've discussed,
nobody's gonna build one router for the United States
and one router for Asia.
So this could be something,
maybe if we block the FCC from getting this done,
the Canadian version says,
no, we think this would be a good idea.
And then companies aren't gonna build different routers
for different areas.
Yeah, this is kind of what I like to bring up.
This is not something that, you know,
this is not gonna end when if we get these rules,
the real proposals that are currently coming,
or I'm sorry, the proposed rules,
if we are successful in curtailing them
and they do not go through the parts of these rules anyway
that we're concerned about.
And these parts do not go through,
we're still gonna have to go back
and get rules that have already passed
and impacting us now overturned.
So this is only gonna be a stage one,
the next month is just gonna be,
next couple of months,
it's just gonna be stage one of a much larger campaign.
So yeah, we're gonna have to,
we're gonna have to campaign in Canada,
we're gonna have to pay campaign in Europe,
we're gonna have to go back in campaign
to overturn the rules that are already passed.
This is a significant issue and we missed it.
The community has missed it,
it kinda went over everybody's head
and nobody seemed to realize the significance of it,
a year ago, I guess,
or well, I don't wanna say a year ago,
I'm not exactly sure what the timeframe was
when they passed the rules.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a year ago,
but I know what I believe my understanding is
it was last year that the rules were,
I guess, basically being proposed and passed
and now they're going into effect,
the first set of rules that I'm talking about,
are referring to.
And again, if anybody has any questions,
more specific questions about the details,
the technical, as far as the technical or legal stuff
that needs a better explanation of anything
that we're discussing, there is a mailing list.
You can ask and there's people,
there's lawyers on the mailing list,
there's software developers who are specifically
developed firmware for these software
and the fine radios that are at the heart of the FCC rules.
You can actually go on the mailing list
and you can get much, much better, clearer,
or even just go through the archive
and get better answers to these questions.
And if you're involved in any kind of product development
or downstream in particular,
that's definitely a place that I would encourage people
to go and get on because they're,
we're organizing and the more impacted parties,
especially people who have a financial interest in it
that we have, who are working on,
we're finding the letters to the FCC
and providing more details and more examples
on and more statistics on how this is going to affect
affect everybody the better.
And that's actually one of the things
that's going to be more convincing to the FCC
to get done this to curtail what the proposed rules
than they really anything else.
There's all sorts of products you might,
you know, there's all sorts of products you can find.
One of the ones I always,
I was using for a little while when I was talking about these
issues was VPN routers, VPN or when we were phrases.
Routers that ship with VPN software
to enable people to have a more private browsing,
private internet access experience, for example.
So for, I'll give you an example.
So in the UK and in Australia and a lot of countries
in Europe, they have censorship.
They have a, you know, some of it, you know,
people will justify, some of it, you know,
people won't, they're just like,
yeah, this is, this is overboard censorship.
But then the less these countries have censorship,
a lot of people don't realize it, but they do.
And they use these routers and they'll buy these routers
and they'll connect to a server on the United States
or they'll connect to a server in Canada.
And they'll get around a lot of censorship.
But these routers with these new rules would not,
these companies wouldn't be able to,
you know, they wouldn't be able to ship this product anymore.
So, yeah, I mean, it's very important that you understand
that this is not really, you know, one product
or one project that's going to be affected.
It's going to be everybody.
It's going to be everywhere.
It's going to affect, it's going to affect everybody.
Or like another good example is with Android phones.
Right now, the, there's, there's, you know,
and I want to reiterate, the phones,
the phones are probably a more interesting,
interesting topic to kind of go into
because the phones, they have separate chips
for the, the modems basically.
And so you can flash, you can flash them
without a problem, the basic, the main part of it anyway.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that the Wi-Fi,
now that the Wi-Fi is also going to be affected,
that the Wi-Fi is in a separate trip.
It may be part of the SOC, and I probably is,
if I had to, if I had to spec, it's speculation.
My part, I just want to make that clear
because I don't actually know, I'm not,
I haven't been involved.
I've only, I've only, I've only pitted a little bit
of attention to what's going on with, you know,
Grappuccine and Sy, Syge and mod,
and similar phone, phone firmware, and so on.
So I don't actually know, for a fact,
that the Wi-Fi's are usually on the SOC,
which are going to the phones, but that is often the case
with many types of armed devices.
But so with these new rules, it could be that,
they have to lock the, lock the phones down,
which is, which is, which is humorously,
but with a lot of these companies are already doing,
without these rules, but it could force companies
to lock the firmware down, the core firmware,
so you couldn't flash Syge and mod,
or a replica or so on.
So yeah, it's, it's, there's a lot of,
there's a lot of examples out there.
Yeah, and again, we already, we already,
I should point out, there's already lots of problems
with the modem firmware on like cell phones
and then similar types of devices that aren't being fixed
and security issues, so, you know, this is not,
this isn't like, we was,
the impact is gonna be much, much bigger,
and it's gonna affect a lot, a lot more people.
We can give specific, you know, smaller examples
and in certain areas, I can't go into as much detail,
but I can, there is one good, one I can use
for the Android phones actually,
that is a perfect example of what we won't be able to fix.
If these, these, these rows come into a perfect,
so for those who are familiar or aren't familiar
with the Replicant Project Replicant
is basically a free version of Android.
They basically rip out all the proprietary bits
because Android isn't really free.
It's not free software.
It's got a free, you know, kernel maybe,
and it's got some free underlying bits,
but a lot of the stuff that runs on top
that chips with it, totally not free.
The Replicant version is not,
doesn't have those bits.
And when Replicant removed these bits,
well, again, this is a long time ago,
they didn't know that they were removing spyware,
but it became, it became known more recently,
probably within the last year or two,
that all Android phones were shipping with the spyware.
And the only reason Replicant wasn't shipping with the spyware
was because it had removed this non-free piece.
So, you know, having access to the sources is very important.
Not having devices locked down is very important.
We need to be concerned about these,
you know, these types of proposals.
We need to keep our eyes out there.
We don't know what, you know, there's a,
there's all sorts of different interests
that want to take away control of, you know,
of one's device from the user.
And if we don't send in our comments to the FCC,
if we don't protest these issues,
we're not going to be able to do the things
that we've taken for granted for all these years.
And it's already getting worse,
as far as, you know, like firmware's go,
they used to be, you know, we could get companies
to, you know, release source code for, I don't know,
some of the Wi-Fi frameworks, for example.
But, you know, with the latest generation,
not so much, not, there's nobody in these companies
cooperating and, you know, with the new roles,
they won't even be able to cooperate,
even if they want to.
And in other cases, they're,
there's with the signature checking in and the locking,
the companies are already doing it.
Nvidia is a perfect example on their,
so there's, there's, there's free firmware for,
and Nvidia free drivers and free firmware for Nvidia,
older Nvidia graphics trips.
It's the project isn't a NOVO project.
And they, they have the ability to reverse engineer
and produce a free driver, basically,
for these older Nvidia graphics cards.
If you look at the newer Nvidia graphics cards,
you'll notice that they're not supported.
And the reason they're not supported
is because Nvidia is locking the firmware.
They're checking the signature.
They're firmware signed and they're,
they're checking, they're checking to make sure
that the firmware that you, you try to load
is also signed by them.
And if it's not, you won't be able to do it.
So, you know, and, you know, so we're seeing,
we're seeing these locks all over the place already
and it's not, it's nothing to do with FCC.
These are companies doing it out of their own,
their own interests.
And you can see this with Intel,
Nvidia and Intel are the two examples
that I'm much more familiar with.
But there's, I'm sure there's lots of other,
other great examples.
I'm trying to get some more examples,
but I'm not having much luck here
from the other developer who is with me at the moment,
who works on some of those stuff.
So.
All right, I'm going to give people the website again.
It's www.savewifi.org.
We're looking for people to send in comments to the FCC.
The FCC is basically trying to ban third party software.
So they're basically, they're trying to get manufacturers
to lock devices down.
So you might not be able to install, you know,
your favorite distribution or you might,
well, we already, it's very clear with the routers
and the firmware because they've actually explicitly
gave an example of how they're asking manufacturers
how they are going to prevent the loading
of third party firmware.
So in other words, you wouldn't be able to load,
you know, DDWRT, OpenWRT, Liberty CMC at all.
It with these, with these rules that they're proposing
and or already an effect.
And a lot of routers we've already seen,
you know, we've already seen a firmware locks
coming shipping with firmware locks now.
So it's very important that people write in,
write to the FCC and tell the FCC
how these locks are going to negatively impact,
you know, their usage and what they do.
And any statistics you might have, you know,
right, you know, it's like the psych statistics.
Give examples because those are the most valuable comments
as far as getting the FCC to not pursue
these particular rules, proposed rules.
Again, this site is www.savewifi.org.
And I'm gonna point out that,
the name of the campaign is actually quite misleading
in the sense that it's not really about Wi-Fi,
it's about having control over, control over our devices.
And it's not just going to affect,
you know, it's not just gonna affect the Wi-Fi chip,
it's gonna affect everything
because the way manufacturers are going to solve this problem,
the certification problem,
is by implementing the quickest and easiest method
of complying with the rules.
And that is the practical implications
of those rules are the problem.
It's not necessarily that it can't be done
in some other way, it's just not going to be.
And there's no, the FCC itself has stated
and it is assumed that much.
In the very, in the very questions
that are being asked, I mean, your factory
is doing the certification process.
And I'm gonna repeat this for if anybody's just,
I don't know, I'm not sure if this is,
I'm not sure exactly how this is being broadcast
or people are listening in on it.
But if you're just tuning in now, basically,
they've asked the question of,
how are you going to prevent the loading
of third-party firmware?
And they gave an example, DDWRT.
So it's not just DDWRT, it's a LibreCNC,
which is 100% free firmware, by the way.
Opened WRT, any of these,
I had, what is some of the other ones, tomato?
Not tomato.
Well, there's others, I'm not, I'm not,
I'm not, I can't quote them off top of my head at the moment.
Any of these third-party firmware is,
you're not gonna be able to load on these devices anymore.
Yeah, to clarify Chris,
I don't know if the radio is a podcast
that is broadcast every, or not broadcast,
but there's a new episode on the site every weekday,
five days a week.
Right now, we're looking at a 14-day backlog,
but if I get the show edited tonight,
I'm gonna ask the administrator to let me
put in like a public service announcement
and add it in front of, you know,
get people aware of this situation,
and once it's uploaded,
people will be able to access it ahead of time
if they want to.
Okay, there's no feed going out tonight like it says,
but, you know, it'll definitely get on the schedule
within the next two weeks.
Gotcha.
And like I said, I'm hoping we can add a PSA
where people can get jumped to it early.
Great, great, great.
So I wasn't entirely sure if it was,
so I realized it wasn't being aired tonight,
but is it actually aired like on the radio
or is it just purely a podcast?
That's what I wasn't 100% sure of.
No, it's purely a podcast.
You go to Hector Public Record.
Okay.
And there's a feed, of course,
or you can download them.
Like I said, if you want to download episodes ahead of time,
click on the give shows link,
and then there's a calendar,
and you go to the calendar,
and any show that's been uploaded into the calendar,
you can go ahead and grab.
All right, so I probably don't need to repeat myself so much.
That's good to know.
Now, the one last thing I wanted to interject,
looks like my Wi-Fi is pretty,
or not my Wi-Fi, my mobile is pretty good right now.
Surely the FCC is not so foolish to understand
that, okay, yeah, they could probably do away with,
or try to do away from us on the desktop.
It would affect a minuscule amount of desktop users,
though those who did would be angry like a hornet's nest.
But, you know, on the server side,
you know, if they did something to make it so open source
couldn't be used on the server side,
they immediately take more than half of the servers on the web,
and half or more of the servers running,
including their own, because on the show notes,
there's a cruel command you can run to see
what a site is using as their web server,
and a site that is actually running in Gen X.
This doesn't really surprise me.
This is very destructive, I guess they have come back now,
that if it says it's IIS.
Yeah, you have to understand that a lot of this stuff
that a lot of legislation that passes is really,
there's already like legislation and rules and things,
there's already plenty of legislation and rules
to do the job, or for those who are in charge
to do the job that they're in charge of doing.
And what it is, they're basically trying to get
more legislation passed so that they can basically,
you know, do things like throw books at people,
and just because they can get you for one thing,
doesn't mean if they pass additional legislation now,
they can get you for others, or maybe they're not really
gonna use the legislation or the rules against everybody,
but they'll use it selectively.
Maybe they don't want Google coming out with an Android phone,
so they'll selectively use it against Google,
but they like Apple.
So they'll go ahead and they'll let Apple get a free ride,
and Apple will get away with a lot of stuff
that Google won't be able to get away with,
and because they're using it selectively.
I don't know if that, I don't wanna suggest
that that's the intent here, I don't know,
I'm just, it's really hard to believe that,
it just seems so dexting of how this could affect us.
It's just so extreme, it's not logical,
it's just not, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
The significant of the impact,
if it was taken, and if it was enforced,
as fully as it could be,
is, it would take down everything.
I mean, it would just be so astronomical
as far as the implication and negative implication,
and how I really can't even see,
I suspect that they're not going to,
they can't possibly enforce the rules everywhere
on everybody, because if they did,
it just isn't gonna work.
I mean, you understand that a lot of this stuff is the code,
they don't have, there isn't a closed version of the code,
it's all free software,
and if there isn't a closed version of it to begin with,
how do you close something that is,
maybe hundreds of different parties have a part
ownership of the copyright too,
you have to get them all to agree to
relicens their code under some sort of proprietary license.
The whole idea that this will work is just mind-numbing,
it isn't gonna work, there's no way it's gonna work.
Maybe we could even ignore this issue,
and it'll go away on its own simply because
of the amount of collateral damage will take us down,
I mean, it'll take everything down,
but we can't risk that either,
because if they do, if they selectively enforce it,
well, it could be, they could selectively enforce it,
so they take out all the little guys,
and then maybe you won't be able to get routers
with VPN software on them anymore,
or maybe they'll use it,
maybe they'll use it so that they can insert back doors.
Again, I don't know, I don't know what their intent was.
Nobody seems to have, no, their intent.
It's been speculation, they've used double talk to clarify
and basically deny it, but it's very clear.
They've asked questions that explicitly,
again, they asked the questions such that the only way,
I mean, your manufacturer can even respond,
is to say, oh, we locked down
and we implemented signature checking.
If that's the only answer,
if that's the only answer you can give
to come to get certified,
clearly, there's a problem here.
Even if you can make the claim that the intent,
it's not to lock everything down,
it doesn't really matter because that's the implication,
that's what's gonna happen.
Just based on the questions that are being asked
as part of the certification process,
and the rules as they are and how they can be enforced,
you're not gonna risk a $20,000 per device find.
You're not gonna test that in court.
Nobody's gonna test that in court.
It's not how it's gonna go down.
Everybody's just gonna lock their devices down.
It's just that simple.
And it's not gonna do them any good
because a good luck telling places like Oli Baba
that they can't sell $30 SDR
instead of straight to your door.
Yeah, no, they're not gonna be able to,
they're not gonna be able to, with the current,
so with the current, the way the current rules are,
it doesn't say it has to be a hardware lock.
It doesn't specify any kind of locking at all.
It's again, it's that fix of this.
It could be that the FCC though could decline,
they could maybe decline, if somebody says it.
See, here's the thing, you might reply saying,
oh, we implemented signature checking in software, right?
But the FCC could come back and say,
well, that's not good enough.
Well, now what, you have to implement hardware locking,
if you implement hardware locking,
then you're not even going to be able to,
the end user is not going to
or any downstream user for that matter or a party
or a seller, reseller, or retailer,
or a value add, reseller,
which is most of them, really.
They're not going to be able to,
you know, they're not going to be able to do this.
It just, this isn't, this isn't, this isn't,
this can't happen, it's just, this can't happen.
We got to stop it.
So go to www.cwifi.com, send the FCC comments.
Well, the only thing we can really hope for, the FCC,
has the brains, they have the balls,
to go to these hardware manufacturers and say,
now, this, you know, software locking is a good enough,
is not what we intended.
What you're going to have to do is only use a radio
that in hardware can only do the legal parameters
or, you know, have it sandboxed at such a point
where it doesn't matter what firmware
or operating system you put on the system.
Because I mean, let's face the FCC is,
like I said earlier, they're, they're very black and white.
They're not, they're not, they don't deal in gray.
I mean, if there's, if there's one way to make a radio,
do something they don't like, then they're,
they're going to legislate that no matter how many people,
they destroy or inconvenience.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
They're, it's interesting because they're,
they've, they've come out in the past.
They're, they're, they're, their response is much different.
Now, then what has been their response,
I noticed in the past in regards to similar types of issues.
So one of the things that the FCC has come out and said
when many are factored.
So one of the things many, many, many years ago,
Lenovo, I actually believe it was IBM at the time,
came out and they started implementing a locking
of the Wi-Fi card, the white listing basically.
And basically the white listing is just, it says, okay,
if it's, this card, this card, or this card,
yeah, go ahead, boot the system.
If it's any other card, don't boot the system.
And they were implementing this.
So basically what it did is it prevented users
from swapping out Wi-Fi cards with, you know,
a different Wi-Fi card or, you know,
buying any other Wi-Fi card than the one
that you get from IBM, basically.
And the FCC, and nobody else at the time was doing this.
But over the years, slowly, over the last several years,
all the major manufacturers basically start doing it,
most of them anyway.
We now have Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Apple, Sony,
HP, if I didn't mention HP.
There's a good six or seven of them now
that are locking Wi-Fi cards down on laptops already.
So you can't switch the Wi-Fi card.
So, and it was interesting because the FCC came out
and said that this isn't required.
And we don't, there's no such requirement.
But that was the excuse that was originally given by IBM
at the time.
And it's interesting.
If you actually look at major manufacturers,
you can still get, there's tons of laptops
you can get from other major manufacturers
that don't have this, whitelisting, or these locks,
in their systems.
So I do tend to believe that, you know,
the FCC didn't at the time require it.
And it was a financial, there was a financial interest in it
because, well, for, there is, I mean,
there's, there's certain something is very clear
about why a company would go ahead and do that.
And again, it's because a good portion of,
most of the profits that come from selling laptops
and desktops and things like that,
don't come from selling the desktops at the laptop.
There's low margins on that.
What they make the money off is, it is all accessories,
the warranties, the services that you buy
along with those products.
That's what they make the money.
So to see a company like, you know, Lenovo or IBM,
or HP or any of these companies lock the hardware,
it does, it does seem more reasonable to me,
that the reason that they had started doing it
was because of, was because, was financially,
financially, financial interest in doing so.
They, they have come out and they have said stuff like,
oh, well, it's not the FCC.
It's, well, they, they think they quoted the FCC,
or not, not quoted, but they, they, they,
I think what they originally did was they,
referred to the FCC as banning it,
but then they came out later and been like,
after people, you know, after the FCC came out and said,
oh, no, we don't require this.
I think they came out with another statement,
something to the effect of, oh, well,
the FCC doesn't require it, maybe,
but we have to do it because other countries require it
or something to that effect, which,
which was really actually thinking about this back
now was really kind of silly because,
you, just because you sell a laptop in, you know,
another country, the rules,
the rules that you have to comply with are for the US.
So they're not required to lock down the Wi-Fi cards for the US.
They're, they're required to lock down the Wi-Fi cards
for that other country.
So the whole idea, like, their whole response was really,
like, doesn't really make a whole heck of a lot of sense.
But again, their original response didn't really make
a whole lot of sense either because it was obvious,
it was playing as day that nobody else was doing it
at the time.
And even now, there's lots of companies all these years later.
If this was something, if this,
if the FCC really was forcing it,
if you would have seen it across the board,
you wouldn't have seen it, you know,
just with IBM or just with a handful of manufacturers.
Everybody would have been complying because the FCC,
if the FCC comes down on you, they're going to,
and maybe initially they might not be harsh on you,
like, really hard on you with a $20,000 per device
fine or a computer fine, but, you know,
if you continue to violate and you disobey them,
they will come down really, really harsh on you.
If you're a small player, you're probably out of business.
So everybody's gonna comply.
Yeah, and in the interest of disclosure,
you know, as far as buying my hardware for Linux,
I'm one of those cheap SOBs who buys, you know,
used for six-year-old hardware,
rather than going on fake penguin or something,
but having talked to you would see your support for our cause.
Maybe next time around, I'm looking for hardware,
I'm gonna have to seriously consider,
well, maybe I ought to show a little loyalty.
Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, actually it's kind of interesting.
Yeah, I definitely encourage people to buy
from companies that are, you know, supporting free software,
where there's two, honestly,
there's really only probably two companies
I can recommend one big thing,
and the other being Mini-free.
Mini-free is a company in the UK
that basically has done a lot of work on the Libri Boot,
which is a 100% free bios,
it's basically core boot, but without the non-free pieces.
And then there's the other company
that I would encourage people to buy from.
And if you want, and it's actually,
if you don't like new hardware,
they're actually a really good source to go to,
because they're actually refurbished Lenovo's,
which normally you'd say, oh, amen, that's not a good thing,
but the reason they're using them,
there's a reason they do refurbished Lenovo's,
and it's because you can't free a newer laptop
than the ones they're freeing,
so they have to go and use something,
they have to basically free laptops that are older,
and also have enough sources for basically the parts.
So, because the older hardware,
they don't have the digital signatures
and hardware locks on like they do with the newer hardware.
So like with thing-paying-win laptops,
our laptops do not have a free bios.
They, everything else is free,
so you can run 100% for your OS,
but as far as the bios, it's not free, unfortunately.
And then this is one of the things
that we're also trying to get away from,
but it's a very, very big issue.
Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, like,
so yeah, I mean, just, you know,
going back to what you were saying
and how important it is to support.
So right now, we're not making,
we're not making really any money off of the routers,
which is the Liberty CMC is a very important project.
On one of the reasons we sell our routers,
because we need to fund,
we need to fund these types of projects,
and there was a distribution prior called Liberty WRT,
and Liberty WRT, Bob, who's the lead developer,
Liberty CMC actually started that back in,
I was several years ago,
you know what, I can't actually tell you the date, exactly.
But it was for a Buffalo router, actually,
when we were routers, it might even be one of the routers
you bought, but it wasn't actually 100% free.
The router, there was non-free bios,
I'm sorry, not non-free bootloader.
And they actually thought it was,
I guess they were under the pressure,
it was completely free,
and then they realized years later that it wasn't,
but because of the non-free bootloader,
but everything else was free.
And, but that project,
he left that project for,
because of differences in where,
in the direction it was going.
But, you know, one of the things,
one of the other problems that, you know,
happens is that you get in situations
where the developers who are working on these projects,
they're not making any money off it.
And it becomes very difficult to hold down a full-time job
and work on these side projects.
And especially when you're not being paid,
you know, you know, paid what you're worth.
And that happens in a lot,
especially with people who are really,
really concerned about these types of issues,
because they're not, they're just not,
they just tend not to have the personalities
that they're gonna go over to their boss
and say, hey, you're not paying me enough.
So, you end up with these situations
where these people, they just don't have time
to work on these projects.
You know, if they were even getting paid,
you know, $30,000 a year,
which is nothing in, you know,
a first-world country, you know,
they would work on these projects full-time,
despite the fact that, you know,
if they work for industry,
they might be making $100,000 a year.
And that's kind of what's going on with Liberty CMC, really.
Liberty CMC is, it was stifled by the lack of funds.
Bob had to work, you know, he had to have a job, you know,
and you didn't really have the time
to work on Liberty CMC.
It wasn't until about a year ago
that we started funding yet.
And he actually really got it off the ground.
And if we're not, we're not making,
think Peng was not making a, you know,
we're not really, the amount of money
that's coming in versus what we're spending is,
it doesn't even come close to cover costs.
So, yeah, I mean, you know, trying to support these companies
are any company, again,
that's really doing, you know,
real work on some of these types of projects is important.
And then like I said,
I would encourage people to take a look at Mini-Free.
I'm not entirely sure of the URL for that,
but if you go to fsf.org, forward slash RYF,
you can find it.
It's one of the products that the Free Software Foundation
certifies as being completely free.
We also have a few items on that list.
Most of our products could probably be certified actually,
but they're not because it takes time and resources
and energy to get stuff certified and go through it and that
and make sure everything is in fact, you know, free.
But we've done it for three different USB dongles
and a router so far.
We would love to do,
we already know that other devices would also certified,
but it is, all that kind of stuff is time consuming
and most of these companies are not big companies.
You know, there's a handful of employees at best if that.
So if you're, if you're, and also I should also point out
that you can also contribute to a lot of these projects
will have donation pages for donations and or like,
memberships and they also use that for fundraising.
So like, for example, Trisco is a good example.
It's a 100% free distribution and they don't,
again, you won't be making much.
It's, you have to understand that if, even if you get
a lot of people donating, you know, 10 bucks a month,
it generally won't because the projects are just not big enough,
it really doesn't raise enough funds to even keep one full time
develop or working on the projects.
So it is, it is important to try and fund some of these projects.
We can, we can fund some of them, but we can't fund, you know,
most of them we can't fund.
We can fund maybe one or two projects at a time,
maybe three projects nowadays, but yeah,
I mean, we're, you know, we're funding, we are funding,
we're funding Liberty CMC, we're funding and we're funding
one other project.
I can't really talk about the moment,
but it involves laptops and, and, and, and freeing stuff
in relation to it.
So yeah, that's what I have to say about that.
Well, on hacker public radio this past summer,
we have been highlighting some of these projects.
I think one of them was GPG, but, you know,
there were other projects pretty much run by one person
and our critical, not only, you know,
source software, I think, you know,
been adopted by proprietary companies and it's one guy
and he's not really getting paid for what he's doing.
And about ready to get, you know,
if up the ghost didn't say somebody else needs to do this,
I'm not going to do any more for no money.
There's one in particular, and if I hadn't had beers tonight,
I probably could remember which one it was,
but if anybody's interested, they can scan back
on the episode since the first year of hacker public radio
and you'll be, it'll, it'll stand out.
But yeah, there's so much stuff that we all depend upon
and it's one guy who's not getting paid to do it.
Yeah, a lot of these projects don't have a public face to them.
They're being included by, like, you know, distributions,
but they're not, there's not, you know,
a public website where you're going to do it
and downloading that particular component.
So you don't even know, and a lot of these people
who are working on these projects,
they're not even like, they're not making a stink about it,
they're not going out there and be like,
hey, I can't afford to do this anymore.
You know, I got kids to feed, I got mouths to feed,
I got rent to pay, you know, they're not coming out
and they're not saying this and I kind of wish they would.
And they're gonna get, I know, I know, I understand why,
a lot of, you know, a lot of these people are not doing that.
And it comes down to the fact that they get a lot of backlash.
Anybody who, you know, you know, what he has to be,
when projects do do this kind of stuff
and they do come out and say, hey, we need money,
you know, lots of times they get backlash for it.
And I, I'm just, I'm so, I want to say disgruntled,
but that's not quite the right word.
I get so frustrated by, you know, people when, you know,
they criticize people for, you know, requesting money
and they don't understand that it's,
free software is not about, it's not about the money,
it's not about the cost.
It's about, it's different to an ingratis and liberi,
gratis means cost, basically.
And it's with, so in other words, it's with,
so you'd be saying it's without cost, basically.
That's not what free software is about.
Free software is about the liberi aspect of it
or a liberi.
Liberi is basically means liberi.
And it means that you have control.
It means you have access to the source code.
It means you can make changes to the source code.
You can build the source code.
Other people can do it.
You can redistribute those changes.
And just, there's so many people out there
who just don't get it or they're, or they're maybe shills.
They might be, I honestly think that a lot of them are
shills for other companies who have an interest
in undermining these projects, unfortunately,
because there's just so many of them.
It's just, it's hard to believe.
And most of the people, I honestly, most of the people
I talk to have exact opposite, they'd say the exact opposite.
They're basically the exact opposite.
They say, how can we help more?
What can we do?
And it's like, I don't know, other than, you know,
financially contributing, I don't know how you can help.
So it kind of, it kind of takes me back
when I see comments that are downvoted or upvoted
or negative towards some of these projects.
Because I know that there's so much more
where we should all be doing.
And I can't do enough.
I really can.
I'm subscribed to so many different projects
and organizations for funding, not large amounts,
just small amounts, like $10 or $10 there.
And I know it's not doing a whole heck of a lot of good
because there's just so many of them.
And most of them, most of them that probably,
you know, are even more important
aren't getting any funds because they don't have
a public website.
There's some library somewhere that somebody,
you know, maintains.
It's, maybe it's the time, you know,
or the date, for example.
That might be a good example.
It's just somebody updating,
keeping a database up to date
with all the different time zone changes
and things like that.
Or maybe it's, you know, the security,
the open SSL, was it?
Was there, no, it might have been something else.
But that was another,
there was another good one directly relating to security.
And they just, you know,
the person didn't have the time and energy
and they couldn't, they couldn't do it.
And I think they actually got funding eventually
from, I think this is a Linux foundation
if I remember correctly.
After getting a lot of publicity,
they, I think they did raise a bunch of money
for like a year or two worth of funding.
And then I think they got,
I think they did eventually attract
the Linux foundation to fund them.
But I'm not entirely sure if there was a limit
to how long it was going to be funded.
So, you know, they're certain like could have been.
So yeah, these are important issues and funding.
I mean, just that in and of itself
could be, it could be a whole show.
Just talking about, you know, the different projects
that are poorly not funded
or poorly or not funded at all.
Yeah, because there's, yeah, I,
I've had this discussion with a lot of different developers.
I'm working on very important pieces.
And, you know, I think one project, for example,
had something like $8,000 that they raised ever
in the entire life of the project.
And it had been around for 10 years, $8,000.
That's nothing.
So, you know, that's not, that's probably,
then we'll probably won't even feed me for a year.
I mean, let alone, you know, pay rent
and, you know, other expenses and insurance
and things like that.
So, yeah, we need to think about these,
these developers and try and fund them
and try and support companies who are funding them
because there's not a whole heck of a lot of them.
There's, there's, oh, there's actually,
there are, there's like one or two other companies
that you also may want to look at,
fsf.org, forward slash RYF,
that are also doing quite a bit to support,
support this kind of, this kind of thing.
Can't think of them off top of my head at the moment,
but many free comes to mind because,
because they, they're, again, they're the, they're the,
basically the developer behind it is behind their laptops
is, or the frame of those laptops is, is the library boot,
the key library boot developer.
And it's pretty, I believe it's pretty much
a one-man show there as far as, as far as that goes.
And there's the core boot, there's,
there's actually also a core boot developer.
And actually, it's, it's really,
that's actually a really sad situation
because there's another product,
there's another company that's basically undermined
many free and, and the developer behind library boot.
And he's made a bunch of false statements as far as,
you know, cooperation with library boot and, and so forth
and, and trying to free modern laptops,
which is just as impossible.
So yeah, it's, you gotta, you gotta be really careful.
There's a lot of,
malicious, a lot of people out there
who are trying to take advantage of,
of, of basically the goodwill of, of, of the masses.
And, and there was, there was another,
I don't know if you remember,
there was another one here, not that long ago.
There were, I think they were trying to do a tour project.
Like, like, build a router with tour on it,
but it was, it basically was just off the shelf components.
And I don't know if that just,
I don't know if they just,
it kind of just grabbed a hand.
Originally, it might have gotten a little bit
too much criticism because I don't know that
that it originally tent was actually to,
you know, um, you know, to see people,
but ultimately what happened was they,
I think they raised like 200 something plus thousand dollars
and, um, I think they were only asking for like 7,000,
but then, um, but the way they were the, um,
their, their fundraiser was something to the fact
that we're designing such and such.
And they really weren't designing the hardware aspect.
They were, they were working on the software aspect.
And then there was other problems where they actually were
kind of, they, they kind of, I guess,
gave it an impression that, um,
it was going to make all your traffic anonymous
and that's not really possible.
Um, so yeah, it was,
there was multiple angles they could have been putting people
at risk actually with the product, um,
unless they very, we're very clear about what it couldn't,
couldn't do and I guess they really weren't doing that.
So, um, but yeah, I mean, these are the kinds of things
you really got a watch out for,
especially with fundraisers and things like that.
Um, there's, there's, there's,
there are a lot of people who are working on projects
and they're not, they're not running fundraisers.
The people who are running a lot of times
are running the fundraisers or people who are just taking
advantage, um, they're lying, um,
about what they're doing, um,
we're not doing or able to do and it's,
it's sad, um, because there,
there's, there's a lot of good people out there
who are doing a lot of good work.
Um, some of the, and some of these people are not even,
um, they're not, um,
they're not even necessarily developers,
but, um, like, um, I, I, I, I'm not,
I don't want, I'm thinking 1% in particular, um,
but, um, that works for a nonprofit organization,
but, um, he does so much work and he's been around so long
and he, he's in a job that, um, you know,
doesn't pay well.
You have to understand that he could go out and work
for industry, but he's doing,
he's doing good work for, um, um, you know,
he isn't happy, but he really cares about the, you know,
the cause that he's fighting for and, um,
hey, yeah, I mean, it's, it's,
there's a lot of people like that and they don't,
they don't get the recognition that they deserve.
We, we tend to, you know, pick out people once a year,
um, you know, you know, to give them recognition.
And if that's not enough,
there's so many other people out there,
and it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's hard.
It's hard to say it because I, I see it.
I work with a lot of these, um, a lot of these people
and, um, they're, they're never gonna get recognition.
They're never gonna make any money off it.
So, yeah, if you can, if you,
if you can contribute to, you know, projects that are,
um, that have the, um, you know,
have pages that say, hey, support me.
Um, it's, you know, and they're, you know,
they're free software type projects.
Like, again, I like Tru School as a perfect example,
I think, um, because they're, you know,
they're producing a completely free distribution
and they, they haven't pulled in much.
You can go there, you can go to their, um,
page and see how much money they brought in, I believe.
And, um, if you actually, yeah, I think you have to add it up,
but nonetheless, um, the, um, Rubin, um,
has actually made a statement to the effect
of how much money they raised, um, and,
but life of the project, um, that project,
well, it hasn't been nearly enough.
And, um, we're, we actually, it's one of the projects,
um, also that we're, um, contributing to, um, financially.
Um, not, it's not, it doesn't bring it all,
it doesn't bring them in much money,
but it does bring them a little bit of money.
Um, actually, if you want,
if you want to contribute to that project,
um, and you're buying hardware from us,
go to livery.thingpankment.com,
because, um, we donate, um,
25% of the profits from all sales,
if you do that to that project, um, specifically.
So, yeah, I think probably, I'd buy from you,
but I would say, ah, you know, take, uh,
contribute this to this project,
but I want to come, I want my, uh,
you've become blank and I'll, uh,
decide what distribution I want to put on it.
Yeah, I mean, again, you don't have to,
you don't have to go and buy from thing thing,
but or anything like that, not suggesting that.
Um, you can, you can go out and you can get,
become a member of the Triscoll project
or some other project.
Again, there's, there's lots of projects out there
that do have some sort of, um,
um, you, you can, you can go and directly fund them.
Not every, not everybody, um,
but there, there's, there's a number of them out there.
Most of them are, have some sort of front page,
like, you know, like they're like a distribution or something
or, um, the what not.
Unfortunately, usually the distributions
actually probably they're doing that more than anybody else,
but, and they're not necessarily, um,
doing the real core development, unfortunately.
Um, so it is, it is kind of, there are,
there are actually a few exceptions there.
Um, I, I'm not going to,
I'm not, I'm actually not going to name
with some of the other distributions, um,
just because, um, they're, they're,
they're, I don't want to, they're,
they're doing good work, but, um,
I don't want to promote them, um,
just because, um, some of their policies are not,
not proper on, on, on the area, on the restriction.
Um, so there's, there's a,
there's a mix basically, um, between, um,
you're doing everything right, and, and you're not,
you're not doing everything right.
And, and the particular project that I'm thinking of
is got more money than they know what to do with.
So it's, it's, it's perfectly fine to leave them,
leave them out of recommendations.
Um, so yeah, okay.
Um, W-W-W-D-S-A-W-I-F-I-D-W-R-G.
Um, I don't know how long this show is,
so if we're way over the time or anything,
uh, maybe you should wrap it up.
Well, there's, there's no set time,
but we're pushing three hours.
Yeah.
Okay.
Um, folks, if, if you have not heard of this issue before,
you may have heard of, uh, some of the,
some podcasts saying, well,
you won't be able to do open source on consumer routing.
I don't know where any more will listen to this.
I can't show you can go a lot farther than that.
It may be banned from the source altogether.
And, you know, I think this may well be the most important pod,
if, if you're not familiar with this issue,
this may be the most important podcast you've listened to all year.
Yeah, Chris Wade from Penguin and uh,
save Wi-Fi and I agree with you.
It's, it's not so much save Wi-Fi.
It's save open source.
Yeah, it's, it's absolutely.
Um, it's, it's, it's, it's very misleading, um,
but it was, it was catchy and we actually, um,
I think when we, we picked the name,
we actually didn't fully comprehend the, um,
the extent of the, the problem.
So I've been your host 50 and if you want to leave,
please leave comments in the, uh,
comment area on, on the, uh, on the show page,
or contact me directly at 5150 at litixbasement.com.
I, I, I think Chris has made abundantly clear how you can, uh,
contact the, uh, save Wi-Fi movement.
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