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Brian Whitaker's avatar

You’ve got the story right on DL2MAN’s (tr)uSDX. I own two, both legit versions, and have updated firmware on both units using the auth method you mention. He’s working with Guido PE1NNZ for a lot of the software he says - but I’m still pretty confused about the whole thing. I need an Arduino programmer to get the boot loader installed, then another programmer to actually load firmware (iirc).

I’m also confused about his legit sales channels - I was lucky to have found a real unit I think, and it was only when I was looking for firmware did I recognize that there were several knock-offs running around. I made a donation and ordered a second unit.

My sense is that some folks buy the cheap knock-offs ignorant that is what they are doing. I could well have. Although generally not our forte (unless we are a YouTuber), hobbists tend not to make a lot of effort into being easy to find and recognize as the real deal. A legit MakersMarket of sorts would do us well here — I imaging an Etsy for ham, curated by hams.

Some of the problem, I fear, is culture - maybe elements of the same culture that doesn’t have an issue in stealing others work would have folks seek out the most self-serving option for the approach to any project based on others’ work. I suspect this is correlated to those who have little original work themselves. I find it hard to imagine a ham who builds and shares or sells and yet knowingly steals. Encouraging and celebrating builders/makers might be a good way to support a healthy culture in IP ownership and respect for others’ vim n’ vigor to get something original out in the world.

I’m a new subscriber, mentioned by Steve. I found Steve bc someone pointed to his work around 900MHz spectrum allocation… which is interesting bc I’m building out a HaLow intranet for EmComm for my Town.

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John Huggins's avatar

As you observe, what many think are protective licenses (short of actual patents) aren't any form of IP protection at all for the actual "designs. " Things leak into the public domain all the time this way and it isn't necessarily unscrupulous or illegal behavior to clone such items. Patents for design and trademarks for catchy names are the answer for those who truly wish to play in this "protect my IP" game. Short of that, things put on the Internet (not kept a trade secret) are fair game. Grim? Perhaps, but clever ways likely exist to live with and circumvent the reality that protecting designs from copying on the cheap is near impossible. Charging an hourly rate for support of clones makes a lot of sense... probably for legit hardware as well really. .. you gotta eat.

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