At Ham Radio Friedrichshafen I had the pleasure of interviewing Jann Traschewski, DG8NGN, who is a major force behind EU HAMNET. HAMNET is a high speed data network for radio amateurs in Germany and wider Europe. Jann is also the recipient of the 2023 Horkheimerpreis from DARC for his work. HAMNET is supported in part by a grant from ARDC and uses Net-44 IP address space.
Ahrtal? Who needs a digital network, where everything is down? In times where people are lowered by the nature to have the sight on what is around and fight for their own lifes, nobody is online and need the latest news. And for the staff of the departments which are helping at this place, they dont need that too. Unworldly sights of view by a theorist which is besotted in HAM-Radio.
I know a few "Hamnet-evangelists" and they preach that "when all else fails etc...". My problem with that is that if you want to build an amateur-financed volunteer-based emergency digital network having as good or better resiliency than the Telco or Government operated, amateurs need to invest as much or more into their infrastructure and also be located at favourable places. Radio sites with backup power and high towers are expensive both to established and operate, and most network providers nowadays see radio amateurs as both a nuisance and a security problem. 30+ years ago, you could get access to sites just by "good looks" but today network operations are run by accountants who see zero value in amateur radio. Try to convince them that they should give access to tower space, rack space and primary/back-up power for free, when they instead can rent it to commercial users for $$$ or €€€. 73/Karl-Arne
The 'when all else fails...' idea with amateur radio is more legit in ad hoc sense: 'I don't have what you need, but I can quickly build what you need.'
I do have concerns that such net systems have no incentive to be innovative, because there is no way to protect the innovation, given the presumed requirement of 'copyleft' signoff by the ham groups, with exclusion of ownership of derivative work. This means that any and all outside parties can reverse engineer any of such ham-net oriented innovations, themselves cite them as prior art, and add their own additional novelties to secure IP for even better systems. Meawhile, the ham based systems have no way of preventing that nor securing leverage to curtail such reverse engineering 'en passant'. So rather than such a ham based system being cutting edge, it is just a pass-through to something better--by others. And if its better, then the ham based system(s) is essentially obsolete or irrelevant. This is,IMO, a disincentive to this example of possible ham innovation, stifling advancement under the premise of a benefit, unrealized, of 'open source'. I have no doubts that 'open source' makes sense in many cases, but I am not seeing that in this example. Your opinion may differ.
And this under high pressure in a catastrophic situation. Thats what the world is waiting for. Unfortunately thats to see only on the big screen done by Hollywood.
This is also one of the myths surrounding amateur radio. I believe that it originally comes from the days when professional/military radio was conceptually very similar to amateur radio, and the "technically savvy" radio amateur of the era could improvise solutions which were as good or better. However, progress moved on, and amateur and professional radio practices are today very differing in doctrines. For a very long time, amateurs have marketed themselves as "signalmen" who processes written or oral messages between different functions in an organisation, The problem is just that such functions became obsolete 40 or 50 years ago, as minute-operative doctrines changed. Professional infrastructures and produced have also improved considerably, especially in "price/performance". Also, amateurs today are much older and less fit for operative duties. Modern experience has shown that age profiles have made radio amateurs into a group that mostly will need assistance, instead of giving assistance. 73/Karl-Arne
Thats it. The progress moved on and HAM-Radio hangs behind. The times when HAM-Radio got the tinkers and doers are far away, this because the new technology is above amateurs knowings. So to produce a digital transceiver, invent a kind of a small high gain antenna or other specials are far away to be done by the most operators. The hobby is now for users with ideas for the industry. To that most YLs and OMs are understand the scientist, but they cant follow in doing the same. The times of the "Signalmen" are over. But everybody of the amateurs around the world should understand for example what the instellar "shout", which was done by NASA, really was. Its fascinating, but nobody is able to do nearly such things in a minimal version based on the hobby. At last there is to say, that many HAMs are old-fashion minded. They want to hold the old technology and put the new to that. And this all makes no sense at all. The old morse signal for to fight against aliens is a movie.
A common misunderstanding by you and others is that these works aren't copyrighted. That's not correct - they are absolutely copyrighted, but the license is GPL or other license. Therefore the notion of claiming prior art is false, unless you want to advocate engaging in blatant plagiarism. Open source licenses have stipulations that any derivative works must also be published with source code. Otherwise you will be violating the license terms. There is enforcement of this by several organizations including lawsuits. Most do comply voluntarily, but some need to see the inside of a courtroom in order to come to their senses.
Meanwhile, in wonderful Carnavaland They're such a joke Remember: they had to sink their sole aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean for lack of strategy and $$ Oliver
Ria, I have no misunderstanding on this matter. The post you refer to deals with PATENTS not COPYRIGHTS per se. Note that IP encompasses a broad category, and is not limited to source code. Ergo a "derivative work" restriction goes beyond mere copyright. We have had that clarity in prior discussions here on QRZed. A derivative work is:"a piece of intellectual property that substantially derives from an underlying work. "--See, for example, definition in Merriam-Webster dictionary. It is not restricted to copyright. Source code may indeed by a copyright issue--and may also be a PATENT issue, in terms of IP. Kindly read my posts with greater care so as to prevent such misunderstandings of meaning and intent. Virtually ALL PATENTS are "derivative works". That is called, in patent law, "prior art" . To wit: patents are novelty built on the derivative work constituting prior inventions. The issue is when "derivative work' is cited is such 'copyleft' agreements, it does not exclude patents. By not excluding patents, it assumes a broad scope , which tries to go beyond the reach of patent law. IOW if one is restricted on "derivative works" , that encompasses patents , even though patent law may assert, via allowance, that the invention is novel and property of the inventor(s) for a finite period. If one is constricted by a "derivative works" clause, then patents citing novelty beyond the prior art are invalid, if taken by those who sign the agreement. OTOH, those who do NOT sign such an agreement are free o pursue invention and get patents themselves on novel embodiments beyond that prior art. Such agreements lock up the original inventors and can create new inventors --who did not sign the agreement. Wishing you the best, Chip W1YW
At the Dayton Hanvention, we has an Innovation Forum which actually addressed that issue. Frankly, at best your generalization is grossly in error. We had old folks, young folks, open source folks, 'free market' folks. We had famous inventors, we had budding inventors. The common thread was being ENABLED by ham radio, rather than being constrained by barriers of entry invoked by university degrees, industry standards, and so on. They just 'did it'. And we had 400+ people come out to hear their stories. With the internet, information is so freely available, that there is nothing that is 'above amateur knowings'. It all depends on how much time and effort--manifesting passion for radio--the individual wishes to put into it. One of my favorite examples is N1HXA -- who invented the Hex antenna. He is not an industry electronics guy, but one who followed his passion in ham radio and found out what he needed to know to proceed. He was discouraged vigorously by fellow hams--not by industry boffins. I think--MO-- that industries are generated by hams doing their thing. And that is a good thing. Such success stories do not lie soley in the distant past. Of course, your opinions may differ from these. 73 Chip W1YW
