Issue #44: Copycats Stomp on Ham Radio Innovation

Dave, thanks!
You are right, this repository contains information on the transceiver, schematics, printed circuit boards in Gerber format (necessary for manufacturing in any service that manufactures boards) and firmware.
You need to order boards according to Gerber files, solder components to them and flash two processors with the attached firmware. Your transceiver is ready for setup and use.
Also, the repository contains a link to a telegram chat, where our community communicates and helps each other. There is a separate thread where we communicate exclusively in English.

 

That is entirely wrong. Licenses vary -- you can not wipe away, for example,. the difference between MIT license and GPLv3 with one imperious swoop of your arm and a long face.

 

There are so many great threads to pull on in your latest article Dave.

The first is the dynamic and creative people driving open source in many fields and ham radio specifically. Open source is egalitarian and attracts some of the most creative people I’ve met. It’s hard and rewarding work. The reward is to see what you’ve created be adopted and improved by others.

The patent system only protects deep pocket corporations with large legal staffs. I know this because I worked in that environment.

Now that the ham radio market is dominated by a small number of larger corporations the innovation there has slowed to a trickle with proprietary capabilities to boot. One manufacturer of a popular HF radio has a DVI-D port as the only video output. And hdmi adapters connected to the radio will kill it. In 2024! Really?

If nothing else open source efforts will give these ossified manufacturers pause, and that’s a good thing. More on the other threads later.

Tom

 

It is either open source or it is not. He made a choice.

 

n

Thanks Tom. I agree with you that innovation slows to a trickle when there's a monopoly. And there certainly is in the business of manufacturing amateur radio transceivers. If I were in Human Resources, I'd reach out to creative people like we have here and lock their newest designs up! Also, I know the radio you're talking about and was about to buy one when I read the output is DVI-D. I couldn't believe it. Dave, W7DGJ

 

As we all well know, an assertion is rendered false by evidence which contradicts the assertion.

Tom,

You confuse the unsavory attitude of --some-- large companies with the patent system itself, IMO.

The patent system protects those with patents--that proceed to assert the temporary monopoly afforded by said patents.

You may have worked in that environment, but your global assertion does not represent the experience of all patented inventors and or patent holders. I state that as a fact because your assertion contradicts my experience of 35 years of patents amd 94 issued US patents.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Thank you Dmitry. Your English is excellent, and thank you for the time you invested in this interview and related discussion, Dave W7DGJ

 

Monopoly....

1. the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service:
   "his likely motive was to protect his regional monopoly on furs"
   • a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service:
     "areas where cable companies operate as monopolies"
   • a commodity or service in the exclusive control of a company or group:
     "electricity, gas, and water were considered to be natural monopolies"

Can you give us some examples where patents(a legal monopoly) stifled innovation?

All patents are time restricted monopolies.

I'm not sure what you mean on this monopoly comment: the patent office publishes patent applications because new patents lead to new innovations. It by no means discourages it.

To use an analogy--patents draw lines in the sand but the beach is endless and there is plenty of room for new lines to be drawn.

 

Perhaps "Monopoly" was the wrong word choice. Let me re-phrase that as "innovation suffers when a close knit and small community are driving R&D." By that, I mean the half-dozen names of radio manufacturers who we have here. A monopoly might exist if ICOM purchased Yaesu and Kenwood and drove Flex and Elecraft out of business, etc, but currently that's not the case. I like the analogy of parallel lines in the sand on an endless beach. That's fine. But it costs lots of $$ for the inventor to pursue that line in the sand, and that's why so many areas are dominated by the folks with the bucks (the corporations) pursuing their patents out of R&D programs. Don't mistake me . . . I am with you Chip on getting the small inventor to move to the patent protection they deserve, but it will have to be made less exhausting and less expensive. Dave W7DGJ

 

Chip - congrats on having developed such an extensive patent portfolio. That’s awesome. Our personal experiences vary greatly. Mine is the high stakes Fortune 50 view with trolls, $60M judgements and entrepreneurs. I’d be game to further this discussion offline or on a separate discussion.

The next thread I’ll pull on is the one about innovation. I see Clayton Christianson’s “The Innovators Dilemma” playing out in amateur radio. The large players have simply iterated on previously successful offerings, adding a feature here or there, maybe adopting a technology others have developed. Then there are innovative products like SunSDR2-DX, the various LDMOS amplifiers from the likes of Mercury, the amazing open source software from DXLabs and open source products like the Wolf. There is so much going on. These are the good old days. But almost nothing from the established players.

My next purchase will not be from one of the big guys. They are just too far behind.

 

OK...

I do disagree. (as we often do

Yaesu, Icom, and so on are really not ham radio companies, They are transceiver suppliers to public safety, LMR, defense, telecom. and so on. ALL of their ham radios are spinoffs of radios designed for other services. They do occasionally have extra ham specific features--like CW-- but really the innovations are driven from elsewhere.

Ulrich Rohde (N1UL)created SDR's what...50 years ago? Ham radio is a late comer to the party. Flex is a prime example of a radio designed primarily for other services, and it is appropriately 'flexible'; in fact the real value of ham radio for those manu's is marketing, as hams are involved in buying decisions for these other services, thru their employment.

You are correct that SDR--the entry barrier is WAY low now. And hams are exploiting that for new architectures. Some of that is open source, some of that is IP driven.

Both systems work.

Implementing intelligent radios--AI-- is the next step.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Tom, a lot of people feel like this! When you get a big announcement from the Tokyo show, and then they stick that relatively tiny implementation into a production radio, it's not updated again for 3-4 years! We'll never make the ARS into a bigger market, so we'll always have to manage our expectations from the bigger companies. As Chip says, even Flex is a radio company with other (and larger) contracts. Therefore, small innovators are going to remain our lifeblood. That's why I enjoyed meeting Dmitry and writing about his team. It's real easy in these days of high-stakes politics and international developments to want to dismiss aggressive nations like Russia (as they would for our own "aggressive" nation) from these discussions, but honestly I have never run into a Russian ham radio operator that I didn't like. These guys are just like us. Here's Dmitry's team made up of Russian and Ukrainian (and other nations) developers while there's a war ongoing and yet we all get along! Amateur radio is great! Dave, W7DGJ

 

Sad to say the large players are simply providing the radios and other gear that amateur customer base at large says that they want. Shoot, even the more truly innovative companies in the amateur space have literally had to dumb down their radios to compete. It SO frustrating to see that play out like that, and for so long now. But from a business perspective it is 100% understandable, they really have no choice.

The customer base at large is unable to comprehend what is now very economically possible with current technology. So instead they keep on insisting on rather minor iterations of old designs and concepts. I have posted (OK, ranted ) about this issue here on QRZ and elsewhere for about 20 years now. Doesn't seem to move the needle any. And those same people who don't understand technical innovation at all, are the same ones that the "What's really hurting the hobby" thread in another section here on QRZ is actually about.

And to close this a bit more back on topic, almost none of the above requires any patent protected technology. And as you've noted, a fair bit is even open source.

 

I would argue that a truly properly designed SDR is largely end user use agnostic, so how Flex approached it all was very smart. The history of the Flex DDC/DUC designs goes back a few years before the first 6K's were announced in 2012. It was then a combination of being able to bring what they had learned in that non-amateur project, combined with the key parts costs reaching a low enough level to be marketable to cheap hams. So that is what they did for the 6K's.

But then that cross-pollination went back the other way for the Raytheon (originally) / Air Force project started 6 ish years ago now. Sure the end product from that looks nothing like an amateur radio box, but many of the internal architectural concepts carried forward. Then that AF project work was to a sizable degree repackaged into the ML-9600, which in turn fed into the new 8K series. Probably none of that is news to you, but I wanted to describe the evolution as I've come to understand it for others who may read this. And no doubt there are some errors in my 'timeline' and understanding.

In any case, they used a wholly different design architecture than anyone else in the amateur space for implementing SDR. Certainly way different than what any of the 'big amateur market players' have done so far. And I have seen zero evidence that those big players can do anything other than recreate legacy radios in SDR. They simply lack the imagination or creativity to do so, nor would their loyal customers buy it even if they did.

In Flex's case there is certainly proprietary IP under the covers, combined with open standards like VITA 49, plus some others. But outwardly, those 6 and 8K's are more 'open' than anything from the big players. Just look at how Flex plans to support ALL external linear amplifiers for Adaptive Pre-Distortion, meanwhile the sole example from a big player requires that you use their single amplifier model to get high power APD. Their customer base is totally oblivious to that reality, or they choose to not care. They seem to be fine with vendor lock-in like that. Yuck.

And my position is that a good SDR design is NEVER finished, there should always be room for more and different software that can be written for it. A lot of people can't seem to grasp that concept either.

Once again to bring it back on topic. To take advantage of the API's within the 6 and 8K's doesn't require proprietary IP or anything that is patented.

 

Good post Duane. That amplifier you mention, and the adaptive pre-distortion . . . I put a deposit down on that amp three years ago with DXE and then had to get my money back, as it was clear that the manufacturer wasn't moving in a hurry to get it FCC certified. And the State of the Art in the Amplifier market has changed so much since then . . . you can use a Mercury LUX or another amplifier with most rigs using Adaptive Pre-Distortion and get a lot more bang for the buck. To be restrictive like that, to lock out other brands and products . . . that is NOT the ham radio that I want to participate in. Dave W7DGJ