[stonogo]

That's the opposite of how patents work; if there were patents involved they'd be public record and we could look them up.

No, these modules are closed because it's simpler than making them open. Someone is getting ready to type "FCC and other regulatory bodies prohibit consumer reconfiguration of specific certified radios" but that has nothing whatsoever to do with openness. Being able to monitor something and being able to configure it are not the same thing.

[tluyben2]

But, so, in short, we are screwed for practical open radios? Or is there a way out?

[stonogo]

We can make open systems from scratch: https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband

or we can try to reverse engineer existing basebands, but I'm not aware of any successful projects working toward that.