This is merely a historical archive of years 2008-2021, before the migration to mailman3.
A maintained and still updated list archive can be found at https://lists.osmocom.org/hyperkitty/list/osmocom-sdr@lists.osmocom.org/.
Leif Asbrink leif at sm5bsz.comHi All, The GNU licencing of rtl-sdr is the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. There is also the GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE that better specifies some of the concepts used by the Free Software Foundation, Inc. The library license states that one can change from it to the general license but that one then not can change back: "Once this change is made in a given copy, it is irreversible for that copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy." I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this statement implicates that the library license is more restricted and that things you are allowed to do under the library license are still allowed under the general license. In the library license we can read this: "5. A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a "work that uses the Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License." This means you are free to use the rtlsdr dll available at osmocom but you can not distribute an executable in which the library is linked in. Likewise can I distribute Linrad under Linux and give the user the instructions how to link in librtl.so from the osmocom site or from a complete and somewhat modified version that I will supply myself in case the modifications to the library I will propose will not be accepted. The e4k tuner works very well, actually it is very competitive when compared to the FUNcube Pro dongle, but only with a modified library. http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/hware/funcube/funcube.htm At the moment I am working with the FC0013 code. So far I found these things: The original code uses AGC. To disable it I change the init for registers 0x0cc and 0x0d: [0x0c]=0x78 (normal) or 0xb8 (-35 dB gain) [0x0d]=0x81 (normal) or 0x89 (-60 dB gain) Regards Leif / SM5BSZ PS. The reason I worry about the GNU license is that Linrad is free software. Free for anyone to use for any purpose. I do not want to discourage people from using my sdr algorithms in commercial products. For that reason I claim no copyright and do not include a GNU license. DS.