Post #1873795
2026-02-21 09:11 UTC
@Ea5iyl As far as I can tell, it follows a long line of precedent of such closed technologies and mentalities.
I believe that the following modes are encumbered in explicit and/or subtle ways:
DMR
Dstar
Echolink
Fusion
HamDRM
IRLP
SSTV
VARA
I'd not be surprised if there are others and it might be that I'm unaware of documentation or source code that negates the closed nature of these.
In other words, I think that these are encumbered but I might be wrong.
Replies (3)
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@Ea5iyl@mastodon.radio 2026-02-21 09:17
@vk6flab Didn't know about Echolink. There's an open-source software, QTel, which one can use to communicate to Echolink architecture. The rise of encumbered digital modes is worrying.
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@G4IVV@mastodon.radio 2026-02-22 08:20
@vk6flab @Ea5iyl I totally agree. There's no place in amateur radio for closed source protocols. It goes against all amateur radio stands for. That doesn't mean we can't have closed source implementations of course and I happily use a mixture of open and closed source software & hardware, but what we transmit on air must be in a format fully defined in freely available documentation.
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@DO2SGF@social.darc.de 2026-02-23 20:45
@vk6flab HamDRM and SSTV is implemented in QSSTV which is open source