[TenTec] open source

[Warren Bryant]

Ten-Tec Inc. Amateur Radio Sales wrote:

> At 04:12 PM 9/23/04 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>  I think TT has a moral
>> obligation to either make it all happen or let someone else have a 
>> crack at
>> it.  There's no shame in this -- TT has not failed, rather they have 
>> led the
>> way. They fail only if they disappoint -- and I for one would be very
>> disappointed if they made a radio, wouldn't fix it and allowed no-one 
>> else
>> to fix it either.  Hopefully they're much smarter than to let that 
>> happen.
>
>
> What is not understood about this discussion is that the DSP code takes
> a serious engineering effort to create and cannot be simply given away
> for anyone (including companies that compete with us) to use.  We have
> lots of competition both in the amateur radio and non-amateur radio
> arenas; to simply give away our intellectual property would let others
> use our engineering effort to their advantage.  Perhaps years from now,
> when current equipment is discontinued the possibility of making it
> available for use and experimentation could be discussed - but in the
> short term, there is no possibility of this happening.
>
> Leaving aside the entire discussion of what a project it would be to try
> to provide tech support for people troubleshooting their own version of
> our code to make their radio do something specific and/or modify the
> existing radio.
>
> We do custom engineering work all the time.  There are customized
> versions of DSP radios that we sell as off-the-shelf items out in 
> circulation
> right now - and there was a significant cost incurred for engineering 
> time
> to create these items.   The eventual owners of these custom radios
> paid a hefty price to use our engineering time to modify our intellectual
> property to get exactly what they wanted.
>
> Slightly different topic:
> I've been following the discussion about the recent lack of Jupiter 
> updates
> with a bit of trepidation.
>
> We've taken a lot of heat over "look how many firmware updates
> there have been for this rig..." and the converse is "After three years,
> there haven't been recent updates coming for this rig..." - that's 
> hard to
> win either way.  Yes, updates for the Orion will continue until some
> future date.  No, we haven't done any updates for the Jupiter since
> fall of '03 after three years of issuing them.  That doesn't mean we
> won't do them in future, however.
>
> Scott Robbins W4PA
> Amateur Radio Product Manager, Ten-Tec, Inc.
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Ten-Tec, Inc., 1185 Dolly Parton Pkwy, Sevierville, TN 37862 USA
>   Contact Mon-Fri Eastern: Office/Tech (865) 453-7172 9 am-5 pm.
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>              Service department                         
> service at tentec.com
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>  
>
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>
Scott and all at Ten-Tec

Just a BIG THANKS for all you'll at TEN-TEC for what you'll have done 
for ham radio, keep up the great work.
Sorry for not being there this year for surport but had things come up 
at work  that won out.

73's

Warren
KK4IZ