Comment by Trannosaur
21 hours ago
What is it with mesh projects and having these super draconian trademark enforcers? Meshtastic is the same. One of the main reasons I got interested in MeshCore was reading the Meshtastic trademark rules and just finding them... really really over the top.
I get the feeling the culture in radio is just not the same as regular open source. The free unrestricted sharing of things is an unusual quirk in the world rather than the norm.
In my experience, amateur radio (both licensed and license-free) and 3d printing both seem to have cultural perspectives on open source that differ considerably from the regular open source software community.
But while in 3d printing, outside of hardware, that difference often feels confused (eg, I've seen the Multiboard creator post compliments online about models that blatantly violate his own license), in radio the difference often feels hostile. You have OpenGD77, for example, with its 'we were never GPL' rug-pull that was likely illegal (they had outside contributions) [1]. You have Meshcore with its 'we are open source, except...', and, as you can see in this thread, a difficulty actually finding parts of the code. You have the heavy cultural push against uSDX (seemingly open hardware+source) toward truSDX (DRM-encumbered), and what seems like the quiet acceptance of things like QMX, where you can solder together a radio with DRM that prevents you from installing your own firmware. You even have digital modes that are legally required to be publicly documented, and actually aren't in any meaningful way: VARA FM is probably the worst offender [2], but even modes that are in-crowd enough to be advertised in FCC license exam questions are often effectively proprietary and legally dubious.
What's particularly foreign to me about the culture is that oftentimes, much of the community seems to support behavior that seems malicious from an open source perspective, and attack the open source proponents.
[1]: https://hackmd.io/@ajorg/opengd77-is-closed [2]: https://themodernham.com/reverse-engineering-vara-fm-part-1-...
I don't know any of the players but I'd bet they're licensed amateur radio operators.
Actually the opposite, tons of ppl in the meshtastic community (Discord) berate amateur radio operators. I stopped even discussing the subject because of how much derision I observed or was subjected to. Lots of insults and nasty jokes in passing as soon as the topic even comes up whatsoever. Kinda like your post, actually - offhanded derogatory remarks about an entire group of people solely because of the hobby they're involved in.
The person in question has many radios in the background of his videos, so maybe the comment you've replied to is into something :P
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is it because amateur radio operators legally have standards they have to comply with?
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I will say in Northern Colorado a LOT of the people involved in the MeshCore are HAMs.
Heh, I use MeshCore in Massachusetts and my layperson explanation is that MeshCore is for people who would be HAMs except they don't have the patience to take an exam.
You're probably more correct, but not having the FCC as a barrier to entry using $20 hardware means a passing curiosity becomes me installing a repeater on our roof with a cavity filter that reaches half a city. It's super fun.
I was using a vibe coded UI (unrelated to this guy) that wasn't super disclosed and each dot revision a new basic thing broke. One I couldn't upgrade the firmware without a full reflash. Now I have to turn bluetooth off and back on to connect to it each time. In both cases it worked fine before that revision came out.
Was it because of vibe coding? I mean... it sure seems likely. Maybe it just needs actual testing?
At the same time it is seemingly the only UI firmware that supports bluetooth to my phone, uses map tiles on an SD card to show GPS maps (I have a tdeck so it has an LCD suitable for it), and runs on a tdeck. Oh, and our local channel names are too long for the ripple firmware (perhaps fixed by now) and the channel number limit was like 4? Maybe 10? Arbitrarily low in any case.
So like... I'm still using this vibe coded UI that breaks some new basic functionality each revision. I can connect to it over bluetooth (even if it's now unreliable), I can use my literally like 1 million map tiles with the GPS, I can actually enter the channel names, and I can have up to 20 channels.
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Ham (radio) is not an acronym, no need to capitalize the letters.
Speaking as a person who works professionally in fcc part 101 licensed point to point microwave systems carrying IP data, I have less than zero patience for the BS and shenanigans of analog ham radio enthusiasts.
They always want to posture as if they'll be some critical service every emergency responder comes running to in a major disaster and it rarely if ever happens.
In the interests of not reinventing the wheel, you can see here in the same thread the comment from many other posters about the problems that they have with the behavior, attitude, and perspective of many ham radio operators.
That's unique to american hams.
Most of the world just collects dx entities like pokemon, pota/sota locations, backpain complaints on nets and argue if ft8 counts or not for anything.
So?
IYKYK. Hams are known for a distinctive personality type that can be at strong odds from other tech people and other comms people. Usually in ways that clash with consequences.
I know a few hams that are chill and they are precious doves. I know quite a few more who I won't even engage with for fear of crossing them and them dedicating their lives to making mine hell. Because I've seen them do it to others.
That's not _just_ the hams, mind you. This behavior is overrepresented in hackerspaces in general. But there's a lot of overlap between those groups. Hasn't changed much in the 40-some-odd years I've been involved there either.
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For now, I don't think it's fair to compare MeshCore with MeshTastic in terms of enforcement as that has not happened with MeshCore. This seems to be one guy getting a trademark in the UK without the approval of other members of the team. They're not going after anyone. Not yet, at least.
The protocol is CC and Mark has said go wild, it seems he doesn't want his work to contribute to an unstoppable AI killing machine networm
> What is it with mesh projects and having these super draconian trademark enforcers?
Simple. Follow the money. Meshcore has more than 100k of users, repeaters are cropping up like weeds across the world. And that means there is a serious incentive to "cash out".
Notably, the person "cashing out" here wasn't involved in Meshcore firmware or app development, but in marketing.
All meshtastic code is GPL, the name "meshtastic" is owned by the company that developed it. You can use any of the code, you can't use their name outside their rules. This is absolutely no different than, say, Firefox. The trademark policy is very permissable and you don't even need their permission to use the name on a commercial product.
I think it's totally sensible for the organization to want to have some level of control over what gets their label on it -- the Wi-Fi people wouldn't be very happy about someone slapping their logo all over a bunch of completely incompatible hardware.
Nitpicking, but IIRC, Wi-Fi was born largely as a marketing effort rather than a technical one. Interoperability was an afterthought.
That's overstated. IEEE 802.11 started it all, and they're a standards body. The point of making a standard is to interoperate. Early implementations had problems with interoperability, yes, but interoperability was central to the ecosystem. "Wifi", as in the Wi-fi Alliance was absolutely a marketing thing because need marketing and branding to get consumer adoption but there was also a certification process to it that was a technical process and without that, it wouldn't have worked.