On 24/09/2010 10:07, Rob wrote:
wrote:
On 24/09/2010 03:20, Mike G wrote:
For what reasons would someone be "anti D-Star"?


It's a closed codec - you can't look at it, play with it, improve it or
adjust it.

In fact, being patented, it's ILLEGAL to do any of that.

Which means it's not amateur radio.

Ok but if you have bought a commercial transceiver for amateur radio,
can you look at or improve upon any part of it?

E.g. the firmware that is running on the microprocessor(s) that control it?

Probably, yes.

Done similar in the past (modified firmware/programming software to let
commercial radios go out of band).

But if I want to operate on a given mode (AM/FM/SSB etc), I can build my
own, should I so choose, from whichever components I so choose.

If I was to lose my mind and choose to operate D-Star, I MUST buy an
AMBE chip.

Yeti wrote in -
september.org:

On 24/09/2010 03:20, Mike G wrote:
For what reasons would someone be "anti D-Star"?


It's a closed codec - you can't look at it, play with it, improve it
or
adjust it.

In fact, being patented, it's ILLEGAL to do any of that.

That's not strictly true. The whole point of a patent (from the Latin
'patere' - to reveal) is that an inventor discloses the workings of his
invention to the public in return for legal protection and the exclusive
right to prevent others from exploiting his invention commercially. It
does not prevent others from studying the invention and designing
improvements and even patenting those improvements if they meet the
required criteria. Of course, it will not be possible to exploit those
improvements without the permission of the holder of the original patent
(and vice versa). Whether an individual may build a patented device for
personal 'research' purposes will depend on the patent law in the
country where the patent was granted.


Which means it's not amateur radio.

I agree.

Hell, even the name is a registered trademark of Icom.

On Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:54:46 +0000 (UTC)
Custos Custodum wrote:

In fact, being patented, it's ILLEGAL to do any of that.

That's not strictly true. The whole point of a patent (from the Latin
'patere' - to reveal) is that an inventor discloses the workings of
his invention to the public in return for legal protection and the
exclusive right to prevent others from exploiting his invention
commercially. It does not prevent others from studying the invention
and designing improvements and even patenting those improvements if
they meet the required criteria. Of course, it will not be possible
to exploit those improvements without the permission of the holder of
the original patent (and vice versa). Whether an individual may build
a patented device for personal 'research' purposes will depend on the
patent law in the country where the patent was granted.

The problem is that with something like AMBE, which is an algorithm,
the patents actually only apply to a few absolutely crucial operations
in the encoding/decoding but the text of the patent is as vague as
possible so that the patent can then be as widely applied as possible
and thus cover many alternative ways of doing the same thing.

It's nothing more than legalised extortion in reality, the existence
of the patent reveals very little to anybody because it's been written
to avoid doing exactly that. So the idea of the protection given
balancing the revelation of commercially beneficial information has
disappeared into the mists of time and patents are now used as a way to
tie your competitors up in legal knots even in the case of obvious and
trivial claims.

Now suppose that someone reverse engineered AMBE and made it available
to radio amateurs by putting the information into the public domain.
DVSI would have to take action to prevent this, because by not doing so
they would be undermining their own patent since failing to defend
against an infringing implementation could easily lead to the patent
becoming worthless.

--

Brian Morrison

Brian Morrison wrote:
On 24 Sep 2010 09:42:02 GMT
Rob wrote:

Brian Morrison wrote:
With D-STAR unless you buy the pre-programmed DSP chips or the DV
dongle you can't legally reimplement the AMBE codec at all, and that
makes it very different from other kit that implements unpatented
modes.

The problem is that amateurs cannot live with the fact that someone
implemented a codec that is better than what they can develop
themselves.

Really? I thought that what those of us that can't live with it thought
is that we don't like technology that locks out homebrew. That's what
the use of DVSI's AMBE codec does.

Not really. You can buy the chip that implements AMBE and use it
as part of a homebrew design.
That is really not much different from buying a power transistor to
get 100 Watts of output from your homebrew transceiver instead of
developing your own, or making your own transmitter tube.
Everyone chooses their own level of components to work from. Some
build the microcontroller for their transceivers from a Z-80, an
EPROM, a CMOS RAM and some LSTTL logic. Others use an integrated
microcontroller with everything on a chip. Still others buy a small
board with a functioning computer system on it and use it as part of
their transceiver.

I don't know exactly why JARL chose AMBE other than because it was the
only codec available at the time. If so, they should have thought about
that a lot harder and perhaps decided to sponsor the development of a
free codec instead. That would have been really good, but I suppose I
can see that it would have introduced a delay. D-STAR has other faults,
one being that it appears not to be extensible so that there is no way
to include other codecs and allow the correct one to be used according
to the other user's set up.

When the chose AMBE there really was no alternative. And even today,
you will not be able to find an open codec that offers speech quality
at the bitrate and bit error resilience that the AMBE codec does.

It is very easy to write "then lets develop that" and apparently much
harder to actually do so.

W.r.t. extensibility, it would sure be nice if codecs could be negotiated
and an alternative could be added, but it would not bring much to
D-STAR as there still would be different worlds of users that cannot
talk to eachother (those with the commercial Icom transceivers that
have AMBE and nothing else, and those with the homebrew transceivers
with open codec and no AMBE).

There would be no problem when amateurs could actually develop a
better codec than AMBE. But they have not shown they can.

Well we'll see won't we? It's taken a while to find people with the
necessary expertise but Codec2 is now moving forward with people
working on it that have that expertise.

Given enough time, it could be that something is developed that is
open and does not violate patents. But I think it will take a lot
of time and there is little chance that at the end of this development
there is still a userbase left that wants to buy and use products
based on it.

Sometimes is it better to just admit that someone did a better job
than you could have done yourself, and just pay him for the work.

I have no problem with that, remember that the "free" part of free
software is referring to freedom, not money. But if someone refuses to
provide something that I can look inside and understand then I won't
use it.

It's called a choice.

That is your choice. But that does not mean that others are wrong.

"Rob" wrote in message
...

use it.

It's called a choice.

That is your choice. But that does not mean that others are wrong

Oh dear Rob, you must be new here! While what you say is, of course,
correct it isn't accepted by bigots.

If half of those who are so "anti" DStar got on an developed an alternative
CODEC (and it is just the CODEC which is proprietary), this debate would
have ended long ago. As it is, by the time the alternate CODEC becomes
viable, I fully expect that such systems will be so "yesterday".

Amateur radio has many facets, DStar is simply one of them. Why can't people
be left to enjoy their pet facets while others get on and enjoy theirs?

--
73
Brian G8OSN/W8OSN
www.g8osn.net

On 24/09/2010 17:22, Brian Reay wrote:

Amateur radio has many facets, DStar is simply one of them. Why can't people
be left to enjoy their pet facets while others get on and enjoy theirs?


Because D-Star isn't amateur radio.

There is no experimentation involved, and can't be.

On 24 Sep 2010 16:02:49 GMT
Rob wrote:

Brian Morrison wrote:
On 24 Sep 2010 09:42:02 GMT
Rob wrote:

Brian Morrison wrote:
With D-STAR unless you buy the pre-programmed DSP chips or the DV
dongle you can't legally reimplement the AMBE codec at all, and
that makes it very different from other kit that implements
unpatented modes.

The problem is that amateurs cannot live with the fact that someone
implemented a codec that is better than what they can develop
themselves.

Really? I thought that what those of us that can't live with it
thought is that we don't like technology that locks out homebrew.
That's what the use of DVSI's AMBE codec does.

Not really. You can buy the chip that implements AMBE and use it
as part of a homebrew design.

I know, but that's *exactly* what a lot of people don't want to do.

That is really not much different from buying a power transistor to
get 100 Watts of output from your homebrew transceiver instead of
developing your own, or making your own transmitter tube.

I think there is. Generating RF power from a transistor is not a
patented process, although the actual device may have some patents that
apply to it. If I had the money and skills I could build my own, but
that particular battle makes no sense. Not using a component that
includes an implementation of an algorithm that I'm not allowed to see
and understand is a different level from that, there is no secret sauce
in a power transistor but there is in the program that a DSP chip runs.

Everyone chooses their own level of components to work from. Some
build the microcontroller for their transceivers from a Z-80, an
EPROM, a CMOS RAM and some LSTTL logic. Others use an integrated
microcontroller with everything on a chip. Still others buy a small
board with a functioning computer system on it and use it as part of
their transceiver.

Indeed.


I don't know exactly why JARL chose AMBE other than because it was
the only codec available at the time. If so, they should have
thought about that a lot harder and perhaps decided to sponsor the
development of a free codec instead. That would have been really
good, but I suppose I can see that it would have introduced a
delay. D-STAR has other faults, one being that it appears not to be
extensible so that there is no way to include other codecs and
allow the correct one to be used according to the other user's set
up.

When the chose AMBE there really was no alternative. And even today,
you will not be able to find an open codec that offers speech quality
at the bitrate and bit error resilience that the AMBE codec does.

Yet. The aim of Codec2 is to provide exactly that.


It is very easy to write "then lets develop that" and apparently much
harder to actually do so.

Of course, but there are people who can do it. I happen to care enough
to encourage them and put some money into the venture to pay for their
time.


W.r.t. extensibility, it would sure be nice if codecs could be
negotiated and an alternative could be added, but it would not bring
much to D-STAR as there still would be different worlds of users that
cannot talk to eachother (those with the commercial Icom transceivers
that have AMBE and nothing else, and those with the homebrew
transceivers with open codec and no AMBE).

I'm not interested in bringing something to D-STAR, I'm interested in
bringing something to amateur radio that provides the opportunity to
break away from a proprietary solution that doesn't offer a way of
doing the self-training bit of the licence.


There would be no problem when amateurs could actually develop a
better codec than AMBE. But they have not shown they can.

Well we'll see won't we? It's taken a while to find people with the
necessary expertise but Codec2 is now moving forward with people
working on it that have that expertise.

Given enough time, it could be that something is developed that is
open and does not violate patents. But I think it will take a lot
of time and there is little chance that at the end of this development
there is still a userbase left that wants to buy and use products
based on it.

Except that without actually achieving this it won't be possible to
tell, I'd prefer to do it and then see what happens. Part of the
attraction of Codec2 is that it doesn't only apply to amateur radio,
it's something that can be used in other free software/hardware
projects such as low cost telephony for developing countries with poor
infrastructure.


Sometimes is it better to just admit that someone did a better job
than you could have done yourself, and just pay him for the work.

I have no problem with that, remember that the "free" part of free
software is referring to freedom, not money. But if someone refuses
to provide something that I can look inside and understand then I
won't use it.

It's called a choice.

That is your choice. But that does not mean that others are wrong.

Indeed. But until everyone has the choice between something they
control and something that they cannot control now, and probably never
will be able to, it is not possible to decide which solution is the
more sensible.

I'm not trying to kill D-STAR (although I would prefer that it had
never happened in its current form), but one of its problems is that it
doesn't encourage the best implementation because it comes in one form
only. If there are alternate ways to build compatible equipment then
the path to achieving the maximum performance is opened.

I don't want to see any of the other non-open digital radio standards
come into amateur radio either, I'm not actually against anything other
than the sacrifice of our ability to create our own designs without
having to use something that isn't free (as in freedom).

--

Brian Morrison

Yeti wrote:
On 24/09/2010 17:22, Brian Reay wrote:

Amateur radio has many facets, DStar is simply one of them. Why can't people
be left to enjoy their pet facets while others get on and enjoy theirs?


Because D-Star isn't amateur radio.

There is no experimentation involved, and can't be.

Over here it is probably the mode with the most experimentation going
on in ham radio today...

Of couse not with the codec.
But in any communication system there are things that cannot be changed
or incompatability would result.
That does not mean there cannot be experiments elsewhere in the system,
or in the application of the system as a whole.

Remember packet. The AX.25 protocol was open, but it could not really be
changed because that would break compatability between the many
implementations that existed after some time. It was very clear that
a couple of critical mistakes were made in the design, and there were
proposals on how to fix them, but they never took off as it simply
wasn't practical to change AX.25
It really made no difference if it was open or closed, it was unchangable
anyway.

Yet, amateurs used it as a black-box building block in many applications
and experimented a lot with it.

On Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:22:03 +0100
"Brian Reay" wrote:

Oh dear Rob, you must be new here! While what you say is, of course,
correct it isn't accepted by bigots.

I think you'll find that the only bigots involved here are the sort
that believe that amateur radio should encourage the use of closed
technology.

I believe that we should encourage the use of open technology and allow
radio amateurs to own their future. A sure way to kill amateur radio is
to make it dependent on corporations who do not share our interests at
a fundamental level.

--

Brian Morrison

On 24 Sep 2010 16:34:08 GMT
Rob wrote:

Yeti wrote:
On 24/09/2010 17:22, Brian Reay wrote:

Amateur radio has many facets, DStar is simply one of them. Why
can't people be left to enjoy their pet facets while others get on
and enjoy theirs?


Because D-Star isn't amateur radio.

There is no experimentation involved, and can't be.

Over here it is probably the mode with the most experimentation going
on in ham radio today...

Of couse not with the codec.
But in any communication system there are things that cannot be
changed or incompatability would result.
That does not mean there cannot be experiments elsewhere in the
system, or in the application of the system as a whole.

Remember packet. The AX.25 protocol was open, but it could not
really be changed because that would break compatability between the
many implementations that existed after some time. It was very
clear that a couple of critical mistakes were made in the design, and
there were proposals on how to fix them, but they never took off as
it simply wasn't practical to change AX.25
It really made no difference if it was open or closed, it was
unchangable anyway.

Yet, amateurs used it as a black-box building block in many
applications and experimented a lot with it.

And ultimately it failed (what's left of the packet network is a shadow
of what it was) because of that lack of flexibility.

Amateur radio has a difficult-to-overcome problem in that we always
build systems from the bottom up and don't design in the features that
allow growth and variation. D-STAR is another example of a system that
shares that same fault.

I hope that it's possible to create something that doesn't have these
limitations, provides better function and allows more experimentation
with all aspects of the technology.

--

Brian Morrison