The purpose of this message is just to create the madwifi-devel

newsgroup over at gmane.org. It can be safely ignored. :)
Bye, Mike
-------------------------------------------------------

This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Oracle 10g

Get certified on the hottest thing ever to hit the market... Oracle 10g.

Take an Oracle 10g class now, and we'll give you the exam FREE.

http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=3149&alloc_id=8166&op=click

Thousands and thousands of men from all over the world appreciate the quality of the generic brand-name goods that we offer. Don't wait to join them and make your problems fade away forever!
http://mopsfv.bleachrep.net/?62514121
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

_______________________________________________

Madwifi-devel mailing list

Madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-devel

------=_NextPart_000_0011_01C3D027.DE83D6F0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

	boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0012_01C3D027.DE85ABB0"
------=_NextPart_001_0012_01C3D027.DE85ABB0

Content-Type: text/plain;

	charset="iso-8859-2"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
It's like sleeping in a steam room. It is a common belief that water =

features are connected to water mains and are constantly using water.

The types of fish and plants will also affect the size of the pond that =

you require.

In fact, if I were to stop blogging altogether and shut down the site, =

it would probably be awhile before anyone noticed.

All of us are lucky to have you out there not only fighting for our =

rights but protecting us, informing us, educating us and making it a =

better place to live.

We reveal what it is and where to get it. Each week I review several =

Avon products and tell fun stories at Beauty Dish: True Underground =

Adventures of an Avon Lady!

Please check out the NEW Beauty Dish for useful Avon sale tips and funny =

true Avon Lady anecdotes, updated several times a week! Click here to =

learn more. Mike: We're here talking with Frank Cousineau of the Cancer =

Control Society.

When last I tried Vienna, it was on my poor old PowerBook G4 123 867Mhz =

and it was a somewhat rough and bad tasting experience. If you'd like to =

read more of my real-life stories, please visit my internet home. How =

much is your blog worth?

You should consult your own independent financial adviser and obtain =

professional advice before exercising any investment decisions or =

choices based on information featured in this AME Reporting live from =

the center of the universe. Ben:My name is Ben Kage. Mariah says =

sleeping surrounded by humidifiers is essential to maintain her powerful =

voice, plus the steam keeps her skin looking great too. Archaeologists, =

who are

Happy Fun JSON is not a bold declaration of side-taking in the grand war =

of web service specifications.

Container gardens are unli...
[ message continues ]

Hi all.
We, the MadWifi team, announce our decision to move away from the

binary-only HAL and change the focus of our future development towards

ath5k [1], a completely free (as in freedom) driver which will eventually

become an integral part of the Linux kernel. We encourage all interested

developers to join us and contribute to our efforts.
For those who are not familiar with the concept, the proprietary "Hardware

Abstraction Layer" (HAL) [2] was designed as compromise to allow at least

one Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) wireless driver component. Unlike

many other wireless devices Atheros chipsets can use a wide range of

frequencies and the host software can control many aspects of the radio.

Regulatory agencies all over the world have laws which restrict the use of

the wireless spectrum to certain frequency bands under specific

transmission power levels. These laws drive wireless manufacturers to come

up with solutions to enforce compliance with the wide array of regulatory

agencies. The binary HAL is a wrapper around all chipset registers, and

all direct hardware access is routed through it. This approach ensures

that non-compliant settings are not applied to the radio, while allowing

the open source part of the driver to interact with the chipset in a

permissive manner.
We understand Atheros' reasons for introducing the HAL and distributing it

in binary form only, and we supported it. But this decision forced us to

deal with a black box that we could neither fix nor fully understand - a

major issue for a free software project. This prevented MadWifi from

appearing in many Linux distributions. Because of the proprietary HAL and

since the MadWifi driver also did not make use of the new mac80211 layer

in Linux it has been impossible for it to become part of the Linux kernel.

It's also been clear to us that the "security through obscurity" approach

won't work to protect the hardware against unlawful use. Regardless, we

kept working on MadWifi as no acceptable alternative...
[ message continues ]

This sounds great! Moving to OpenHAL should benefit madwifi in many ways.
There is only one thing I question: "Another important development is

the work on a "central regulatory domain

agent". It aims to ensure compliance with the regulatory constraints and

rules based on the current location of the user. The agent and its

integration with the kernel will allow wireless LAN drivers to enforce

local regulations without requiring non-free software for that task. This

work will soon be published for merging with the upstream kernel."
In my opinion, protection should not be in the software for such

things. While Atheros may be required by law to do this, madwifi (this

is NOT legal advice in any way shape or form) is not required to do

so.
One comparison which can be made to this situation is that of VLC.

Whereas commercial DVD playing apps look at region codes, VLC ignores

them. VLC could choose to abide by these codes and put code in to stop

the wrong region from playing, but the project chooses not to. Madwifi

should do the same.
Another comparison is the GPL kernel module debate. The kernel was

made to prohibit access to certain symbols for programs which were not

GPLd by checking the Module_License to see if it was equal to GPL.

Linuxant got around this by setting the Module_License to "GPL\0for

files in the \"GPL\" directory; for others, only LICENSE file

applies." The null character made this effectively "GPL" so the kernel

loaded the proprietary modules as if they were GPL. Now, Linus

Torvalds got a bunch of patches to fix this. However, his response was

this: "I'd prefer not to do that. Since they want to circumvent this,

almost anything we want to do is a waste of time." He too offered a

patch, adding to it the byline, "Arms race forces bloat upon module

users" [1]. This is the philosophy that madwifi needs to abide by.

Don't protect your code from hackers, or people wanting to abuse it.

Developers should just focus on making the best Linux Atheros driver

possible, and ...
[ message continues ]

Hi,
The current open HAL looks similar to madwifi-old which I really liked

but some of the features like background scanning are absent. I am

interested to know how much of the code that was developed for the

madwifi driver with the proprietary HAL will be reusable in the new

OpenHAL version? Will the aim be to get the driver back to the same

state or will there be large modifications with the added flexibility

of an open source HAL. I hope this does not come across as critical

because it is not intended to be.
Cheers
Dave
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

_______________________________________________

Madwifi-devel mailing list

Madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-devel

Any old legacy madwifi driver (which uses the proprietary HAL) relies

on net80211, with the exception of dadwifi-openahal. dadwifi-openhal

is now replaced though with ath5k [1]. ath5k uses the new Linux

mac80211[1]. Since net80211 is 'complete wireless stack' and mac80211

is a 'Linux API used to write SoftMAC wireless drivers' the drivers as

a whole differ significantly. As such only small portions of the

driver were reusable, and those that were made it into
New development is going to be focused on ath5k. Relying on the

proprietary HAL has been like working with a black box and the legacy

drivers also rely on Wireless-Extensions which will not longer have

new features added, preventing us from extending the usage and

features of the driver.
To reap benefits of the latest Linux wireless developments we must

focus on mac80211, cfg80211 [3] and nl80211 [4]. cfg80211 and nl80211

is still under development and we are yet to provide userspace

utilities for them. However, mac80211 is now part of the stock kernel

and as such we are working on stabilizing it. In the meantime I'd

advise users to look in to wpa_supplicant [5] and hostapd [6]. You can

also still use wireless-tools (iwconfig, iwlist, iwevent) with ath5k

and any mac80211 driver.
  Luis
[1] http://madwifi.org/wiki/About/ath5k

[2] http://linuxwireless.org/en/developers/mac80211

[3] http://linuxwireless.org/en/developers/cfg80211

[4] http://linuxwireless.org/en/developers/nl80211

[5] http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/

[6] http://hostap.epitest.fi/hostapd/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

_______________________________________________

Madwifi-devel mailing list

Madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-devel

Hello!
It's a separate effort from MadWifi, not limited to specific wireless
The difference here is that wireless developers actually expect to work

with the device vendors.  The vendors may be more forthcoming if the

free driver supports regulatory control (directly or through some other

layers).
Anyway, the regulatory control patches are discussed in

linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org, not here.
Please don't cross-post unless you are a member of the team and you are

making an announcement.  You are giving a bad example to others.
--

Regards,

Pavel Roskin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

_______________________________________________

Madwifi-devel mailing list

Madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-devel

So it's going in the net80211 stack? Hrm... maybe I should post my

Here's where I'm confused. Madwifi is going AWAY from Atheros'

assistance(moving away from the HAL). Moreover, why should Atheros(or

any other company for that matter) care if other people choose to

transmit over other frequencies? (The following is not legal advice,

do not use it as such) Atheros does not get blamed if other people use
My apologies,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

_______________________________________________

Madwifi-devel mailing list

Madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-devel

The relevant discussions can be found here:

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/6049
Wrong. While we move away from the proprietary HAL, we don't move away

from Atheros. As stated in the announcement we're in contact with Atheros

I could be wrong here):

Because of the FCC rules that seem to require device vendors (that's not

Atheros, but Atheros customers such as D-Link, Netgear and others) to make

sure that their products can't be "abused" to easily break the regulatory

rules, otherwise these products won't get FCC certification and thus are

not allowed to be sold in FCC-regulated countries. Other regulatory bodies

have similar rules, afaik.
Bye, Mike
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/

_______________________________________________

Madwifi-devel mailing list

Madwifi-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-devel

Congratulations !
I also thought about going to bcm43xx based WLAN cards, as they

are now working much better than two months ago ...  and, from a

what-happens-in-linux-kernel-perspective, it seamed much more

lively and healthy.
For example, several people tried to get better roaming support

into madwifi. That's basically a job for net80211, not for the

atheros chipset. But the madwifi project lacked people with

enought time and knowledge in the net80211 area, so no peer

review did happen and, of course, the code in the madwifi svn

didn't get changed, so madwifi still doesn't roam more smoothly.
So, by moving to ath5k, which is using mac80211, there is no need

to have people that know and can maintain BSD's net80211 inside

Linux. We get the best from both worlds: some very knowledgeable

people in the mac80211 area, and some very knowledgeable persons

in the atheros driver area.
I like that :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft

Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.

http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/