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Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
On 24 Sep 2010 16:02:49 GMT
Rob wrote: Brian Morrison wrote: On 24 Sep 2010 09:42:02 GMT Rob wrote: Brian Morrison wrote: With D-STAR unless you buy the pre-programmed DSP chips or the DV dongle you can't legally reimplement the AMBE codec at all, and that makes it very different from other kit that implements unpatented modes. The problem is that amateurs cannot live with the fact that someone implemented a codec that is better than what they can develop themselves. Really? I thought that what those of us that can't live with it thought is that we don't like technology that locks out homebrew. That's what the use of DVSI's AMBE codec does. Not really. You can buy the chip that implements AMBE and use it as part of a homebrew design. I know, but that's *exactly* what a lot of people don't want to do. That is really not much different from buying a power transistor to get 100 Watts of output from your homebrew transceiver instead of developing your own, or making your own transmitter tube. I think there is. Generating RF power from a transistor is not a patented process, although the actual device may have some patents that apply to it. If I had the money and skills I could build my own, but that particular battle makes no sense. Not using a component that includes an implementation of an algorithm that I'm not allowed to see and understand is a different level from that, there is no secret sauce in a power transistor but there is in the program that a DSP chip runs. Everyone chooses their own level of components to work from. Some build the microcontroller for their transceivers from a Z-80, an EPROM, a CMOS RAM and some LSTTL logic. Others use an integrated microcontroller with everything on a chip. Still others buy a small board with a functioning computer system on it and use it as part of their transceiver. Indeed. I don't know exactly why JARL chose AMBE other than because it was the only codec available at the time. If so, they should have thought about that a lot harder and perhaps decided to sponsor the development of a free codec instead. That would have been really good, but I suppose I can see that it would have introduced a delay. D-STAR has other faults, one being that it appears not to be extensible so that there is no way to include other codecs and allow the correct one to be used according to the other user's set up. When the chose AMBE there really was no alternative. And even today, you will not be able to find an open codec that offers speech quality at the bitrate and bit error resilience that the AMBE codec does. Yet. The aim of Codec2 is to provide exactly that. It is very easy to write "then lets develop that" and apparently much harder to actually do so. Of course, but there are people who can do it. I happen to care enough to encourage them and put some money into the venture to pay for their time. W.r.t. extensibility, it would sure be nice if codecs could be negotiated and an alternative could be added, but it would not bring much to D-STAR as there still would be different worlds of users that cannot talk to eachother (those with the commercial Icom transceivers that have AMBE and nothing else, and those with the homebrew transceivers with open codec and no AMBE). I'm not interested in bringing something to D-STAR, I'm interested in bringing something to amateur radio that provides the opportunity to break away from a proprietary solution that doesn't offer a way of doing the self-training bit of the licence. There would be no problem when amateurs could actually develop a better codec than AMBE. But they have not shown they can. Well we'll see won't we? It's taken a while to find people with the necessary expertise but Codec2 is now moving forward with people working on it that have that expertise. Given enough time, it could be that something is developed that is open and does not violate patents. But I think it will take a lot of time and there is little chance that at the end of this development there is still a userbase left that wants to buy and use products based on it. Except that without actually achieving this it won't be possible to tell, I'd prefer to do it and then see what happens. Part of the attraction of Codec2 is that it doesn't only apply to amateur radio, it's something that can be used in other free software/hardware projects such as low cost telephony for developing countries with poor infrastructure. Sometimes is it better to just admit that someone did a better job than you could have done yourself, and just pay him for the work. I have no problem with that, remember that the "free" part of free software is referring to freedom, not money. But if someone refuses to provide something that I can look inside and understand then I won't use it. It's called a choice. That is your choice. But that does not mean that others are wrong. Indeed. But until everyone has the choice between something they control and something that they cannot control now, and probably never will be able to, it is not possible to decide which solution is the more sensible. I'm not trying to kill D-STAR (although I would prefer that it had never happened in its current form), but one of its problems is that it doesn't encourage the best implementation because it comes in one form only. If there are alternate ways to build compatible equipment then the path to achieving the maximum performance is opened. I don't want to see any of the other non-open digital radio standards come into amateur radio either, I'm not actually against anything other than the sacrifice of our ability to create our own designs without having to use something that isn't free (as in freedom). -- Brian Morrison |
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