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@gkaklas@lemmy.zip
Post #1551585
2026-01-25 10:09 UTC
> you're going to want to buy some LoRa devices anyway
Yes, but you're not *forced to*; you can have nodes in your city that use any radio they want to communicate to each other, and e.g. your local hackerspace can have a node with multiple radios that bridges them to other nodes on the global network
With Meshtastic™®©, if your country bans LoRa™®© radios you simply don't have any other option, so the whole network is just done. With Reticulum or any other agnostic network they can't ban *all* radio modules that can be used
> Reticulum is pretty much developed by a single person.
Hmm that's unfortunate, I didn't know that 😕 But that's a chicken-and-egg and network effect problem; we shouldn't be "forced" (network effect) to use something that is not ideal just because more people use/develop it, otherwise we will never have a better alternative, because no one wants to develop it because no one is using it because no one wants to develop it
At least for me, dedicating energy to build a Meshtastic™®© node would feel like I'm making something that profits LoRa™®© and Meshtastic LLC without trusting the "independence" of its every aspect. It transfers the dependence from the ISP that brings the wire to the home, to the companies that make Meshtastic™®© and LoRa™®©, but it's still a dependence on one or two external companies instead of an independent community like I've seen with other local WMNs over the years
(I don't have the experience to say that Reticulum is the best option, but it's the main agnostic network I've seen with the little search I've done; people reading this feel free to make suggestions! 💚)
Replies (2)
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Meshtastic's not really a company exactly. MeshCore exists if you don't like it.
Semtech does IIRC have patents on and make all the LoRA chips. But the patents will expire eventually, and the LoRA chips they make are well-behaved modules that do what you tell them and not locked-down bits of nonsense that are a pain to work with. The data sheets for the modules are easy to find, and you're not stuck messing around with firmware blobs you need to load into things. You can get boards with the Semtech radios on them from a whole bunch of manufacturers. You'd be hard-pressed to find a competing radio tech with modems available at a similar price point that we "should" be using instead.
And while the ability to use *any* link for e.g. Reticulum is nice, it also means that without coordination you have no idea what link you *should* use, and so you can never see anyone because you have no idea what technology or even what LoRA channel to look for peers on.
And Meshtastic now can go over UDP anyway.
Open ##1551586
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You don't have to pay meshtastic any money, so I'm not sure how they're profiting.
Remember that no man is an island. There is no way to be completely free of dependence on others and that once you've bought a LoRa device, there's nothing they can do to stop you using it as you see fit.
Open ##1551588