[Elecraft] K3 Digital Voice Mode - our future?

[Greg Troxel]

(trying to be brief and return to being on-topic :-)

Robert Nobis <n7rjn at nobis.net> writes:

> To a certain extent, I agree with you. I also do not like proprietary
> technologies. However, if you look at the history of ham radio, many
> of the products and technologies we use today started out as
> “proprietary” technologies. Also, much of the history of ham radio is
> based on experimenting and trying new technologies and techniques.

There's a big difference between an implementation that has a patent and
a protocol that has an essential patent such that you may not legally
implement the protocol without a patent license.  The problem with all
digital voice modes except FreeDV is the patented and undocumented AMBE
codec.

> At least one of these digital technologies, DMR, is no longer really
> proprietary. There are at least 20 manufacturers of DMR radios,
> worldwide.  True, DMR was not originally developed for use by hams,
> but it clearly is a product technology that many hams are now using on
> the VHF and UHF bands, even though I doubt we will ever see DMR on the
> HF bands.

DMR uses AMBE, so it's proprietary, because you (apparently; law is
hard) can't build and sell a DMR radio without a patent license.  An
individual ham may not legally homebrew and use a DMR radio without a
patent license.  One can't distribute Free Software that implements DMR
on software radio.  There are many vendors, and they seem to mostly
interoperate.  DMR is much like D-STAR, in that the container protocol
is open or mostly open, but the codec is not.  This leads to big
manufacturers paying patent licenses and individuals buying
pre-programmed DSP chips to run the secret code that could have been run
in their regular computer, if not for the patent (e.g., the "DV
Dongle").

If Elecraft wanted to put D-STAR or DMR into the K3/KX3, besides the
work, they would have to get a patent license for the codec.  That seems
unlikely - and it would make me unhappy to be indirectly paying for
something that I think doesn't belong in ham radio (well said, Don) and
should not be permitted by the rules.

On the other hand, I suspect that implementing D-STAR with codec2 (VHF),
or FreeDV, would just be implementation work, with no licenses and no
extra hardware.  It doesn't seem like there's critical mass yet for that
to make sense, though.

73 de n1dam