The code for WSJT-X is open source under GPLv3 and absolutely not
proprietary. Joe has written in great detail about the protocol and
the software in QEX and that article is freely available on the WSJT
website.
Nothing is being held hostage. If someone wants to adapt anything from
it, they are more than welcome to.
A lot of what makes FT8 so robust is structured into the protocol
itself - small payloads, use of LDPC and FEC (Low density parity check
and forward error correction) as well as a priori on the decoded side
where cumulative decodes are used to guess the content of partial
decodes. Certainly, repeating CW with different variations in speed
and remembering messages from before and re-creating that is sort of
equivalent but adapting the techniques of FT8 to CW where you have
manual telegraphy probably isn't going to happen.
But if you mean that nobody wants to pick up the source code and do
stuff with it, well maybe that's true. However there have been other
software being developed such as JTDX, MSHV and even WSJT-z which has
used the source code from WSJT-X. Just not for CW because of the
aforementioned challenges in the way FT8 is fundamentally defined.
73
Ria, N2RJ
On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 12:59 PM David Gilbert <ab7echo@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> The signal processing techniques utilized in FT8 could have been used to
> enhance the signal-to-noise of normal CW in a way that would have been
> virtually transparent to the operator. It's truly a shame that WSJT-X
> has landlocked those techniques within FT8 in the minds of just about
> everyone in our hobby, as well as giving those techniques such a bad
> image that nobody seems willing to take up the mantle to fix it.
>
> The signal processing technology behind FT8 is awesome, but it is
> neither unique nor proprietary. It should have enhanced the hobby for
> all of us, especially for us contesters since almost all of our
> transmissions come from keypresses in a logging program anyway. Instead
> it is being held hostage to WSJT-X for no real reason other than inertia.
>
> 73,
> Dave AB7E
>
>
>
> On 2/18/2022 8:13 AM, James Cain wrote:
> > I agree with HA3LN that FT-8 is a terrible blow to what an ARRL director
> > snidely referred to -- on this reflector -- as "our sandbox." Yes, I play
> > only unassisted and you call it what you want.
> >
> > A neighbor guy dropped by and I had just set up my Superstation for this
> > weekend -- a TS590 on a card table and a 11-foot wire dropped out the 2nd
> > floor window. "I can talk to Europe, South America, maybe even Japan with
> > this" said I. "On Morse code."
> >
> > cain K1TN
>
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