[Trannosaur]

What is it with mesh projects and having these super draconian trademark enforcers? Meshtastic is the same. One of the main reasons I got interested in MeshCore was reading the Meshtastic trademark rules and just finding them... really really over the top.

[SchemaLoad]

I get the feeling the culture in radio is just not the same as regular open source. The free unrestricted sharing of things is an unusual quirk in the world rather than the norm.

[cge]

In my experience, amateur radio (both licensed and license-free) and 3d printing both seem to have cultural perspectives on open source that differ considerably from the regular open source software community.

But while in 3d printing, outside of hardware, that difference often feels confused (eg, I've seen the Multiboard creator post compliments online about models that blatantly violate his own license), in radio the difference often feels hostile. You have OpenGD77, for example, with its 'we were never GPL' rug-pull that was likely illegal (they had outside contributions) [1]. You have Meshcore with its 'we are open source, except...', and, as you can see in this thread, a difficulty actually finding parts of the code. You have the heavy cultural push against uSDX (seemingly open hardware+source) toward truSDX (DRM-encumbered), and what seems like the quiet acceptance of things like QMX, where you can solder together a radio with DRM that prevents you from installing your own firmware. You even have digital modes that are legally required to be publicly documented, and actually aren't in any meaningful way: VARA FM is probably the worst offender [2], but even modes that are in-crowd enough to be advertised in FCC license exam questions are often effectively proprietary and legally dubious.

What's particularly foreign to me about the culture is that oftentimes, much of the community seems to support behavior that seems malicious from an open source perspective, and attack the open source proponents.

[1]: https://hackmd.io/@ajorg/opengd77-is-closed [2]: https://themodernham.com/reverse-engineering-vara-fm-part-1-...

[mschuster91]

> What is it with mesh projects and having these super draconian trademark enforcers?

Simple. Follow the money. Meshcore has more than 100k of users, repeaters are cropping up like weeds across the world. And that means there is a serious incentive to "cash out".

Notably, the person "cashing out" here wasn't involved in Meshcore firmware or app development, but in marketing.

[tbyehl]

I don't know any of the players but I'd bet they're licensed amateur radio operators.

[amatecha]

Actually the opposite, tons of ppl in the meshtastic community (Discord) berate amateur radio operators. I stopped even discussing the subject because of how much derision I observed or was subjected to. Lots of insults and nasty jokes in passing as soon as the topic even comes up whatsoever. Kinda like your post, actually - offhanded derogatory remarks about an entire group of people solely because of the hobby they're involved in.

[celsoazevedo]

The person in question has many radios in the background of his videos, so maybe the comment you've replied to is into something :P

[fooqux]

Eh, it's a stereotype. In my opinion, they should always be questioned, especially when it's an unkind one like this.

Frankly I'm surprised to see this here. Hackers have had more than their share of hurtful stereotype applied to both our hobby and our personality. We should know better. But perhaps there's a generational divide at work there.

[celsoazevedo]

Yeah, you're right.

[atomicthumbs]

is it because amateur radio operators legally have standards they have to comply with?

[RobotToaster]

Kinda, most hams are very rhadamanthine about following every tiny rule to the letter, or their even stricter interpretation of the spirit. The type of people who complain about young people not joining the hobby while insisting on maintaining strict licensing rules and tests. It's very much the polar opposite of hacker ethic.

[pluralmonad]

The two biggest ham people I've known both, independently and separated by years, discussed enjoying war driving looking for "pirate" radio signals that they can report to the FCC. Amusing to find this is a cultural aspect of ham radio licensees.

[komali2]

I've got friends in the scene and their behavior about it reminds me of other types of friends I have

1. Amateur pilots

2. People late in their years getting into martials arts for the first time (will be the loudest "KIYA"s in the class and always doing the most aggressive deep bows lol)

3. Non libertarian gun nuts. Oh buddy the attention they pay to everything from how you load your gun at the range to how you've had it packed in your car.

I have specific individuals in mind for each of these categories and I say this without ill intent, I'm not trying to disparage this behavior, it just seems to be a specific kinda thing, where following the exact letter of written direction seems to be half the fun for them.

This in opposition to some other types I know who aren't having fun unless SOME rule is being broken...

[ctime]

Off topic but rhadamanthine? Is this word zeitgeist now?

[RobotToaster]

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Rhadamanthine

It's just a word I like to use, it has a nice sound to it.

[ajsnigrutin]

This + amateur radio is designed to be open, no encryption, anyone can talk with anyone, and if you're "being stupid" (to not use other terms), anyone can tell you so.

The "secret, encrypted, private" chats correlate more with random "doomsday preppers", and younger non-hams (cheap, no need to get licenced). Many of those people buy (ham) radios too ("for emergencies", can't transmit legally anyway), but don't really contribute to anything. Emergencies are handled by trained groups of hams when/if they're called to help by whatever proper agency needs help with communications.

[M4rkJW]

You can legally transmit for any emergency, regardless of licensing status. The emergency definition is purposefully left ambiguous so as to apply to many situations. Lost in the woods? Go ahead, transmit; the FCC isn't going to knock on your door if you live. Every HAM should know this already.

[austinthetaco]

This is the correct info. Anyone in an emergency is allowed to use the amateur frequencies. Just got my technician license a couple weeks ago, emergency use is even actually on the test!

[linsomniac]

I will say in Northern Colorado a LOT of the people involved in the MeshCore are HAMs.

[neltnerb]

Heh, I use MeshCore in Massachusetts and my layperson explanation is that MeshCore is for people who would be HAMs except they don't have the patience to take an exam.

You're probably more correct, but not having the FCC as a barrier to entry using $20 hardware means a passing curiosity becomes me installing a repeater on our roof with a cavity filter that reaches half a city. It's super fun.

I was using a vibe coded UI (unrelated to this guy) that wasn't super disclosed and each dot revision a new basic thing broke. One I couldn't upgrade the firmware without a full reflash. Now I have to turn bluetooth off and back on to connect to it each time. In both cases it worked fine before that revision came out.

Was it because of vibe coding? I mean... it sure seems likely. Maybe it just needs actual testing?

At the same time it is seemingly the only UI firmware that supports bluetooth to my phone, uses map tiles on an SD card to show GPS maps (I have a tdeck so it has an LCD suitable for it), and runs on a tdeck. Oh, and our local channel names are too long for the ripple firmware (perhaps fixed by now) and the channel number limit was like 4? Maybe 10? Arbitrarily low in any case.

So like... I'm still using this vibe coded UI that breaks some new basic functionality each revision. I can connect to it over bluetooth (even if it's now unreliable), I can use my literally like 1 million map tiles with the GPS, I can actually enter the channel names, and I can have up to 20 channels.

[linsomniac]

I came up with a way to install a repeater 20ft up a mast that's been on top of the building my office is in, but it's been idle since the TV station that used to be in here left. It has decent reachability, but unfortunately it's not at a particularly high point of the city, it has great reacability into the University and can reach my house, but there's a ridge to the south that puts the antenna more like ground level if it was on that ridge.

[teachrdan]

Next project: putting a repeater on that ridge!

[satvikpendem]

Ham (radio) is not an acronym, no need to capitalize the letters.

[walrus01]

Speaking as a person who works professionally in fcc part 101 licensed point to point microwave systems carrying IP data, I have less than zero patience for the BS and shenanigans of analog ham radio enthusiasts.

They always want to posture as if they'll be some critical service every emergency responder comes running to in a major disaster and it rarely if ever happens.

In the interests of not reinventing the wheel, you can see here in the same thread the comment from many other posters about the problems that they have with the behavior, attitude, and perspective of many ham radio operators.

[austinthetaco]

Not sure why you're denigrating HAM radio folks. They have in fact historically already been useful and critical in emergencies, most recently in 2024 for hurricane Helene. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean its not. I mean RACES is even a whole thing explicitly outlined because the government realizes the value of some ham radio operators.

[walrus01]

It takes real money and infrastructure to build resilient emergency communication networks on a county or state sized scale. And HAMs just don't have it.

Go look at the budget documents for the tower sites and entire radio communication networks that support public safety networks (police, fire, ambulance) on a scale of somewhere the size of King County, WA. Properly engineered hilltop tower sites with well maintained generators, redundant radio links, etc. Amateurs just don't have the resources to do these things properly and are a distraction at best.

My opinion is not new or novel - the people who built the att long lines microwave network in the pre fiber optic era very rarely if ever had anything to do with ham radio. Persons concerned with actual mission critical emergency communication systems learn the hard way that amateur dilettantes just don't have the financial resources or time to do it properly.

If you want to build an emergency communications network, it's going to cost money in real equipment and paying for the man hours of full time equivalent employees to build and run it.

[austinthetaco]

You're moving goalposts here. They have already been involved in emergency communication numerous times, its not the most optimal emergency communication, but critical nonetheless because of it's decentralized and among-the-people nature. Some elmer with 80ft tall tower in his backyard sometimes has a better chance at communicating with random operators that are at the location of a post-disaster scenario. If you don't want to look at helene, look at 9/11 where they became the primary communication for some red cross, medical facilities and personnel, and even new york's OEM.

[ajsnigrutin]

That's unique to american hams.

Most of the world just collects dx entities like pokemon, pota/sota locations, backpain complaints on nets and argue if ft8 counts or not for anything.

[walrus01]

Collecting replies like pokemon seems like a real waste of time in my opinion. I can send an ICMP ping to something I know is in Svalbard Norway across the regular Internet and get a reply, but I don't pin a postcard to a cork board on my wall celebrating my amazing technical accomplishment.

Similarly, for all the effort that people put forth to do EME and get bidirectional traffic with some tiny data payload bounced off the moon, they could be engineering real world production systems that do something cool with real, existing LEO, MEO, geostationary two way satellite data systems, accomplishing some useful purpose. Or at least doing something like cubesat ham radio traffic relays to carry a useful payload.

A great deal of what analog ham radio enthusiasts seem to care about falls into the category of being a dilettante in my opinion and has very little bearing on building serious networks that carry traffic/payloads people will rely upon .

[doom2]

I really don't understand this line of argument and why you seem to be taking offense at an entire hobby. It's like asking why people who maintain home networking labs spend so much time and effort doing that when they could be putting those skills to better use at companies like Cisco. Or why people assemble computers at all when you can just get one from Best Buy. Why do people waste time with Raspberry Pi when you could do something cool with a real, existing exascale supercomputer?

There are many different niches in the amateur radio hobby. Some people want to buy off the shelf radios and antennas to make contacts over the air. Some people want to experiment with their homebrew designs and see how far their signal reaches. Some people want to experiment with very low power radios. Some people (including a Nobel prize winner!) want to experiment with new digital communication protocols for amateur radio use. And yes, some people want to use amateur radio for emergency communication purposes.

Why is it so wasteful for any of these groups to do what they're doing instead of applying their skills to something "useful"? Why is it any more wasteful than participants in other hobbies? That also ignores the fact that many amateur radio operators _do_ apply themselves to "useful" things: they're electrical engineers, physicists, software engineers, educators, military or emergency personnel, etc.

[amatecha]

> Collecting replies like pokemon seems like a real waste of time in my opinion

It's a hobby. "Let people enjoy things". Please remember this: it's a hobby. It's right there in the name: amateur radio. We're not trying to be world-class industry-leading RF engineers.

[walrus01]

Neither are the nycmesh people, who seem to have a fair bit of hobby-grade fun in doing what they do in their spare time, but the end result of their hard work provides significantly greater real-world end to end communication systems for people to use... If the purpose of amateur radio is to communicate, DXing and such doesn't really accomplish much real world utility.

No, not everything in the world has to be utilitarian or accomplish a purpose. But amateur radio is continually living in the past, their entire communication paradigm is often based on something akin to circuit-switched networking when the packet based networking world passed them by quite some years ago.

[ajsnigrutin]

Sure, and walking uphill just do walk downhill is pointless too, and people are also bragging they've gone very far uphill to go very far back downhill,... they could be doing much more useful things instead of climbing mt. everest. Why bother, when you're higher than that (almost) every time you fly in a plane?

But hey, like with everest, you don't have to do EME or collect countries if you don't want, nor you have to climb different mountain tops, hike the trails, etc. You don't even need to travel, it's cheaper just to see everything on youtube.

Some people like their hobbies, and if that hobby is to climb high mountains or reach as many countries as possible, then why not? Amateur radio is a hobby, if you want to work on eg. starlink, they could ne hiring.

[doom2]

From personal experience, I'd just say that the number of emcomm-focused hams I've encountered in the hobby has been quite small but even when I have, they are no more or less annoying than anyone else I've met who are involved in emergency management. I guess I don't understand where people get the impression that the whole hobby is focused on emcomms. Do people really think every American amateur radio operator drives a Ford F-450 packed to the gills with antennas and radio equipment?

[fooqux]

So?

[busterarm]

IYKYK. Hams are known for a distinctive personality type that can be at strong odds from other tech people and other comms people. Usually in ways that clash with consequences.

I know a few hams that are chill and they are precious doves. I know quite a few more who I won't even engage with for fear of crossing them and them dedicating their lives to making mine hell. Because I've seen them do it to others.

That's not _just_ the hams, mind you. This behavior is overrepresented in hackerspaces in general. But there's a lot of overlap between those groups. Hasn't changed much in the 40-some-odd years I've been involved there either.

[jimnotgym]

I have an amateur radio licence and I agree. One reason I rarely operate...

I always found it interesting how many useful little apps hams write, keep them closed source and then...die.

[toyg]

Could it be because of the history of radio and early electronics being full of inventors getting ripped off by unscrupulous parties...?

[fragmede]

Hurt people hurt people, as they say. The entire field is held back because of trauma. "I could invent something amazing but get screwed out of it because someone else has money and lawyers" is just no way to live. The problem for radio is I could invent the most magical amazing transmitter, but it's worth absolutely nothing if there's no corresponding receiver. Which is to say, open standards are everything. Meshtastic/MeshCore/etc are interesting because they're open. It doesn't have to be. Off-grid mesh communication is a solved problem, just buy a GoTenna. Problem is it's proprietary. But it works, with a whole lot less drama.

[jimnotgym]

Yes, and they extended that myth to the incredibly niche software they built that has a commercial value of...nil

[ted_dunning]

That is certainly the myth that drives this.

There is also a fair bit of demographics at play. Many of the people writing these little applications grew up and imprinted before open source was much of a thing.

[busterarm]

It's kind of alarming how much more enjoyable the less legal communities in the radio hobby are to spend time around.

[DrewADesign]

I get the sense that a lot of the hams I’ve met have a framed hall-monitor sash from their high school years.

I’ve been sniffing around it as a hobby for decades but there are just a ton of people involved that clearly are exorcising trauma from being bullied or feeling marginalized in their life on a whole. Following and enforcing the rules seemed like the beef big draw for a sadly large chunk of them.

[bobsomers]

I don't really think its fair to lump hams into that behavioral bucket. It's certainly a personality type that tends to get attracted to lots of different technical hobbies.

[mystraline]

> IYKYK. Hams are known for a distinctive personality type that can be at strong odds from other tech people and other comms people. Usually in ways that clash with consequences.

Yes, old mildly misogynist, mildly racist, wellakshually, holier than thou, pro-trumper types.

I was there at Dayton Hamvention (2024) when they had to turn off the 2M repeater because 2 or 3 of them got into a screaming match over trump.

Naturally, I skipped over any trump-flag hanging booth. But the hatred and extreme conservatism is everywhere in the community.

And its not my community any longer. I let my license lapse, and I will not renew. I also sold my radios, except for 2 2M handhelds, just on the off case SHTF.

I'm a radio hacker, not a ham. I'm no liddy elmer. And nor will I perpetrate shit like YL (you g lady) or OL (old lady), which is common vernacular.

[busterarm]

It's not even just a pro-trump thing. That's not even the thing particularly annoying about hams because that's annoying across all of society. I can tolerate disagreeing with peoples opinions but not disagreeable/disharmonioous behavior.

Hams act super gatekeepey and act insanely protective/defensive around things that don't actually belong to them. They tend to have a high sense of self-importance around their skillset and try to do their own "enforcement" of rules that they feel empowered to harass people about. Hams tend to be "fixated persons". They care about their personal capabilities and usually some made up authority they think that gives them. All so they can just endlessly chirp hello world at each other. They developed a skillset and then don't do anything useful for the community with it. Notice I said the community and not their community. They love building insular clubs. They act like authority figures _across the whole damn spectrum_ when their purview is tiny.

The coolest radio hacker I ever met was an ex Army radio guy and Desert Storm vet. He ran a licensed LPFM station somewhere in the rust belt but with a pirate radio mindset. Their transmit power was way above what the license allowed but they also weren't bothering anyone :). His station ran afrocentric community/educational content and he ran after school programs teaching teens in his community brodcasting/radio/electronics skills. He helped several of them obtain scholarships. I've rarely if ever seen hams do anything nearly that cool.

[ajsnigrutin]

It's a simple exam that 10yo kids pass all the time. If someone is complaining about the licencing process, the problem is on that individual, not the system.

Like with roads and cars, radio spectrum is a very limited and very shared resource, and there has to be some regulation, or else some Elon Musk-type person would already take it for themselves for a commercial reason.

It's also self-policed, so that means that hams have to find the problematic entities and hope that authorities with legal power act on those reports.

The devices can also be uncertified (self-certified by a ham technically), so you can cause all sorts of havoc for many other entities, like actual emergency services (a case not long ago in US) or worse.

If you are not able, or for some reason or another don't want to get licenced, there are other ways to communicate, like mentioned meshtastic, which doesn't require a licence on ISM bands, or PMR/FRS radios (or gmrs in us, which does require a licence but you don't have to learn the radio basics for the exam).

Again, like with roads and cars, you expect others there to be mentally capable enough to pass that simple exam and follow the basic rules on the air. If not, they can get a bicycle and argue on the bicycle lane with other cyclists. And the ham exam is much cheaper and easier than a driving exam (in most developed countries at least, the driving one costs 1keur++ if you finish optimally, whereas over here, a full intro to ham course (a few weeks, usually on zoom) with a printed book and the actual exam costs <100eur, even less with a pdf instead of a book)

[dostick]

What is IYKYK ? If you know you know?

[DrewADesign]

IYKYK

[sweetheart]

yeah

[celsoazevedo]

For now, I don't think it's fair to compare MeshCore with MeshTastic in terms of enforcement as that has not happened with MeshCore. This seems to be one guy getting a trademark in the UK without the approval of other members of the team. They're not going after anyone. Not yet, at least.

[queenkjuul]

All meshtastic code is GPL, the name "meshtastic" is owned by the company that developed it. You can use any of the code, you can't use their name outside their rules. This is absolutely no different than, say, Firefox. The trademark policy is very permissable and you don't even need their permission to use the name on a commercial product.

I think it's totally sensible for the organization to want to have some level of control over what gets their label on it -- the Wi-Fi people wouldn't be very happy about someone slapping their logo all over a bunch of completely incompatible hardware.

[toyg]

Nitpicking, but IIRC, Wi-Fi was born largely as a marketing effort rather than a technical one. Interoperability was an afterthought.

[fragmede]

That's overstated. IEEE 802.11 started it all, and they're a standards body. The point of making a standard is to interoperate. Early implementations had problems with interoperability, yes, but interoperability was central to the ecosystem. "Wifi", as in the Wi-fi Alliance was absolutely a marketing thing because need marketing and branding to get consumer adoption but there was also a certification process to it that was a technical process and without that, it wouldn't have worked.

[pwndByDeath]

The protocol is CC and Mark has said go wild, it seems he doesn't want his work to contribute to an unstoppable AI killing machine networm

[zobzu]

they all hope to make lot of money of of it. meshcore has a marketing team spamming reddit all day and a mao to make you believe people use it right now. then you connect to yhe mesh and you're utterly alone there. at least meshtastic has real users lol.