On Mon, 09 May 2005 16:17:59 -0700, Roy Lewallen
wrote:

Then the question becomes, who will define, develop, and maintain the
software? I can tell you from experience that it's no easy matter to
keep any software working properly as new operating systems, protection
software, and hardware appear. Add the necessary hardware interface to
the equation and the job gets tougher yet. Oh, and what do you do when
key components of the interface become obsolete and no longer available?

There are large, well established operating system created and
maintained by volunteers. The problem with some special hardware is
often that the hardware interface specification is not publicly
available (as with some 3D graphics cards).

Writing a device driver for some radio modules would not be that hard,
provided that the module control is designed in a somewhat sensible
way. As long as the hardware interface specs are available for these
modules, the software is not going to be the show stopper.

Paul OH3LWR