I completely agree with your remarks.
For people who are interested in opensource and amateurradio, I propose you have a look at the conferences on that topic.
Overhere in Europe, there are two of them
- FOSDEM ("Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting") is a yearly event held in Brussels every 1st weekend of February. In the 2024 edition, there was a devroom ("developers room") on SDR and Amateur-radio. https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/radio/
The videos of the talks are online. I propose to have a look at the talks on M17 and on OpenRTX.(*) Also open source hardware is becoming more interesting.
- Next september, we will be hosting "spectrum24", a new conference on "novel ways to use the spectrum we -as citizens- are able to use. It puts a lot of emphesis on Open-source as yes, most -if not all- of the new projects coming out in amateur-radio are open source.
For this conference, we are at the "cfp" (Call for Presentations) stage. See here: https://spectrum-conference.org/24/cfp
I know that Europe is the opposite side of the globe for you in Autralia. Perhaps there are similar events on your side of the world.
Kristoff (ON1ARF)
(Posted this as a seperate message so not to mix multiple subjects)
As you mention "microcontrollers in the signal-chain of a transceiver", I am currently looking into OpenRTX.
It is really a very nice example of exactly what you mention and something that has become possible to last 1 to 2 years. With these radios that support opensource firmware, It really has allowed amateurs a look of what is inside of the firmware of a "commercial-grade" handheld radio.
Two weeks ago, I helped out in an infobooth on Amateurradio at a makerfaire here in Belgium. Things like OpenRTX allow to explain to IT-people (who normally only work on computers) how "embedded software" works, how software that runs in devices we use everyday operates. In that sense, FOSS is as much an educational tool as it is "just a piece of code that does something".
Kristoff (ON1ARF)