Nvm, guess I haven’t played with hamvoip for a while to test that stuff lol.
I can’t think of a reason why it would be better for the community of experimenters to not release the source code, but certainly respect it’s the authors work and not a requirement to release it.
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On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 8:09 PM Steve N4IRS < szingman@...> wrote:
It does not need to be compiled for Arch. The binary will run fine.
On 11/26/20 10:08 PM, Skyler Fennell
wrote:
I'm guessing one reason is if you open source it
HamVoip can then compile it for arch
On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 6:17
PM Steve N4IRS < szingman@...> wrote:
Because we do not feel it is in our or the communities
best interest at this time.
On 11/26/20 7:58 PM, Skyler Fennell wrote:
Why is analog_bridge not open source?
On Thu, Nov 26, 2020 at 3:19 PM Tony
Langdon < vk3jed@...>
wrote:
On 26/11/20 3:54
am, Steve N4IRS wrote:
> DMR, after D-Star, is the most political of the
digtial voice modes.
> Unlike the other modes, most DMR systems
connect to a centralised
> server, known as a "master" and that is
responsible for all of the
> talk group routine, personal calls, and
position data interpretation
> and forwarding. There are three main
centralised systems:
> BrandMeister, DMR+ (known as Phoenix in the
UK), and TGIF.
>
> What these systems have in common is that they
are closed source. This
> is not good for the amateur community. There
were mutterings about
> them having signed NDAs with Hytera and
Motorola to get details of
> their internet connection protocols, which may
or may not be true.
> Even if true, why not make the non-NDA parts of
the source code open?
>
> In the commercial world, digital voice
repeaters, be they for DMR,
> P25, NXDN, or dPMR have limited abilities
within themselves for call
> routing. They do include CPUs of course, but
for anything other than
> simple point-to-point links, they are useless.
This limitation is fine
> for what they were originally designed for,
small centrally controlled
> networks, with or without a dispatching console
function. The YCS
> system for System Fusion is looking to do the
same for YSF and that is
> why I oppose it.
>
> This model of a centralised control structure
carried through to the
> amateur DMR networks. In its simplest form, a
repeater would simply
> have a point-to-point network connection to the
master and things
> would be fine. Even with a semi-distributed
system, with one or more
> master per country, there is still some central
control of the system
> with the power to overrule the decisions made
at the local level. Such
> central control is also not conducive to
supporting each countries
> requirements, and leads to much used
functionality being arbitrarily
> removed. In the extereme case the countries
master may also be
> removed. When such things happen you have to
ask from where did they
> derive their authority? Who voted for them? Who
made the decision and
> how do they know that it is correct?
I'm in agreement with the general idea. I was
involved in EchoIRLP,
which came about simply because people like me
simply wanted to be able
to connect to whatever network we wanted. EchoIRLP
also incorporated
features to protect the networks from accidental
cross linking, which
was one of the reasons it was readily accepted, once
people got their
head around the concept.
While it's great to play with different modes, we do
have a real "Tower
of Babel" when it comes to DV modes. Projects like
DV Switch do go a
long way towards mitigating the effect of having
multiple incompatible
modes among a relatively small user base.
>
> In the amateur world we have gone beyond having
dumb repeaters. Most
> MMDVM systems for example have a Raspberry Pi
or similar running the
> system, and have the potential to provide a lot
of local processing
> power which can be used for more complex tasks
than simply routing
> traffic over a point-to-point link. Many sysops
expressed the wish to
> be able to have access to multiple masters,
simultaneously, and hence
> the DMR Gateway was born in 2017. It does
complex call routing, and
> almost everything else, bar the position data
interpretation.
What would I like? In an ideal world, I'd like to
be able to
communicate with the hams I want to, regardless of
network or mode,
using the radios I have, In essence, think of it
like EchoIRLP on
steroids. I have something close to this with my
AllStar node, which
not only can do AllStar, IRLP and Echolink (IRLP/EL
via my existing
EchoIRLP node - with all proper lockouts in place),
but it's configured
to do DMR (BM), YSF and P25 via a local DVSwitch
installation. I'd
like to be able to run multiple DMR networks
eventually.
The end game is something that performs the role
that IP does for data -
providing routing over the top of multiple networks,
so any endpoint can
find any other endpoint.
Another issue is audio processing. I believe in
processing the audio as
little as possible. This philosophy goes back to
EchoIRLP (2003-) and
the IRLP/Echolink integrated conference servers
(2005-), and results in
the best audio quality with minimum latency. DV
modes, unlike the
analog systems often don't have a "common vocoder",
so some amount of
transcoding is unavoidable, but again given the
aggressive vocoders in
use, I'd like to keep it to a minimum, while
preserving as much metadata
as possible. Incidentally, this would be handy
internally in cross mode
gateways like the one I have in the cloud.
Here's how I see it working. At the source, the
audio is decoded to
PCM, and two audio streams are sent - one in PCM and
a second stream in
the original encoded format. Information about the
vocoder in use is
added to the metadata. Stations receiving the
stream examine the
vocoder metadata. If they natively support the
vocoder used, they
simply take the original encoded voice data and use
that. Otherwise the
receiving nodes that can't handle the source vocoder
will take the PCM
stream and re-encode that. In these days of
unlimited (or near
unlimited) broadband Internet, the overheads of
doing things this way
shouldn't be an issue. If a viable software
implementation of the
D-STAR vocoder comes along, it would still then be
possible to have a
"dumb" node linked to a "smart router" running in
the cloud, to save
local processing power or bandwidth, if needed.
>
> In some quarters this development was opposed.
I believe that the
> sysop should have the choice on how to route
their traffic and so
> development went ahead and it has been enhanced
since. It has been a
> huge success.
>
> I think that the time has come to look at
having an open source,
> non-centralised, DMR network. A network where
no one person or group
> has control. We already have the beginnings of
this with the HBLink
> and with XLX projects. If more people get
involved with these projects
> then they will grow and offer more features as
time goes on. I
> haven't played with HBLink yet, but it does
interest me.
The only issue I see is avoiding issues like routing
loops or malicious
interference (sadly, it does happen). For the
former, it would be ideal
if the network was smart enough to detect loops and
then take action to
block the source of problems or break the loop,
until it's fixed.
Otherwise some human oversight would be needed.
I do run an XLX reflector, but keep it standalone,
as the very manual
interlinking process isn't compatible with my ADHD
(I did play with it
in the early days of XLX). I'm also somewhat cut
off from that
community, because they moved all their internal
communication to a web
forum years ago, which is relatively inaccessible to
me - too slow and
cumbersome and yet another login to remember to
check.
>
> Some may say, what about integration of
commercial repeaters like
> Hyteras and Motorolas? There is already a
program available that
> converts the Hytera repeater protocol to the
protocol used by the
> MMDVM, and integration of Motorola repeaters is
possible all be it
> with a number of programs in series. Maybe
someone will rationalise
> this into something simpler.
This could be a use case of the "dumb node" scenario
above.
>
> Things are already moving on this, and I hope
that in the future we
> will see such systems appear and then DMR will
be free of the tyranny
> of what we have now. Sysops and their users are
sovereign and should
> not be dictated to by anybody (the same goes
for software developers
> :-) ).
Let's hope for more openness. :)
--
73 de Tony VK3JED/VK3IRL
http://vkradio.com
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