[Sanddancer]

Okay, first a bit of background on the wifi ruling. The WiFi issue is because the 5ghz WiFi band has some rather sensitive pre-existing operations, like weather radar, that are intermingled in some of the channels given for WiFi usage. There are a lot of times and places where such items aren't in use and can be used as additional wifi channels, but when there is a need, those channels need to be vacated and not considered usable for at least a half hour after receiving a signal. However, there were a lot of companies that weren't upholding their end of the bargain, so the FCC put in more stringent testing requirements, including ensuring that the radio cannot transmit where and when it's not supposed to. Because of this, most companies just took the easy way out and locked down the whole router, instead of putting the wifi chipset's control software in ROM or some other way of locking down the firmware.

Now, the Pi 3 does not talk on the 5ghz band at all, so even in Soft-AP mode, it's not capable of even coming close to violating the rules. Other desktop chipsets that can run in the 5ghz band have programming to not allow them to be APs in the 5ghz band, again steering clear of those rules. The 5ghz ruling is complicated because there's a lot of issues that tend to be glossed over in articles about it, which just muddy the waters.