And no, it is not free as in free beer, but free as in free speech.
An alternative would be easy accessible documentation with easy to understand specifications. But I ofthen find it hard, if not impossible, to find any documentation. And if I do, I usually struggle to understand.
@hb9hox@Ea5iyl I'm advocate of open source also. But it is not simple. If you do it for your freetime then the burden of maintenance is a real chore. And you still need to have your day job. Alternative is to sell your product and work it full time to pay the bills.
Innovation (closed source or not) is the key. Moving forward is key. Competition is good. If someone steps up with FOSS competitor for VARA: Good! But if not then we continue using VARA because it gets the job done.
@Ea5iyl@clacke@hb9hox VARA HF accomplishes a successful digital two way communication between two amateur radio stations.
I can send Winlink email from my portable station in Oulu to a station in Oslo using just 10W of power. That's 1000km QSO.
The speed is adjust automatically to conditions. With good propagation I can see nice transfer speeds, but with bad propagation or interference it still can function, but with lower speeds.
I've not yet found another tool with similar performance.
@oh8hub@clacke@hb9hox You did not mention the band for your 1000 km QSO, but I get the point. But my point was not about performance, but rather about transparency, openness and understanding, and how it relates to what one could call the ham spirit. There is no understanding here because the VARA developers (as ROS developers) have decided to hide their success behind a secret algorithm (which, by the way, has a bandwidth of 2 kHz [compare that to the few Hz taken by CW or PSK or FT8]).
@Ea5iyl@clacke@hb9hox I'd love to see volunteers taking the challenge and start implementing open source version or competing alternative to VARA.
But while we're waiting, I'm happy to see the project continuously evolving and being used in real world.
We are not entitled to push down a project if at the same time we do not ourselves step up and provide alternative. There's too much hate and negativity in the world already.
Nobody is forced to use it. And many users area happy with it.
@oh8hub "Nobody is forced to use it" is always used as an argument for convenience over openness and interoperability and it's only mostly true at best.
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