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A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

bellard.org

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Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#42

Post by wr1472 »

jeormormont wrote: post #18
zvikara wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fabrice has contributed to opensource more than almost anybody here. Absolutely no shame if he prefer to keep the source closed this time.

I think perhaps you've missed the point of free and open source software.

"...of free and open source software."

Not everything you write has to be free and open source.

Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#43

Post by wr1472 »

RachelF wrote: post #22
willvarfar wrote: post #4

Very neat. Shame that 'interested companies can contact me'. Would be fun to know how such base-stations - when attached to antenna - can be used to spoof things and perform attacks. Lets hope that comes up at some blackhat conference soon...

Yes, it is a big shame that this is not open source. I wonder how much he plans on making from this?

I hope he makes a shed-load from this. I wouldn't begrudge him any of it, given his contributions to the software community to date.

Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#45

Post by ippisl »

While it's a big technical achievement, in a world when companies are talking about 4G LTE bill of materials of $50 [1] for a picostation(roughly 20mhz) and vodaphone setting targets for $100(my guess for a full device) , where does this fit in ?

[1]http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/09/07/picochip-femtocel...

Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#46

Post by konstruktor »

ippisl wrote: post #45

While it's a big technical achievement, in a world when companies are talking about 4G LTE bill of materials of $50 [1] for a picostation(roughly 20mhz) and vodaphone setting targets for $100(my guess for a full device) , where does this fit in ? [1] http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/09/07/picochip-femtocel...

This aligns very well with the values of hacker culture: learning, exploration and enabling others to do the same.

Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#47

Post by mindjiver »

asg wrote: post #19

I was pleasantly surprised to see the LTE specs are freely available. Large consortium specs of this nature seem to be quite expensive. (cf: http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store.htm ) Wonder what the patent licence situation is with the LTE specs?

LTE (as with most 3GPP specs) are heavily patented. All patents are available under FRAND licenses however.

Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#48

Post by mindjiver »

trigger wrote: post #29
nathell wrote: post #9

Fabrice Bellard is one of the guys I dream of one day achieving the level of productivity of.

Productivity and sheer balls. My on-the-side projects are pathetic compared to what this guy does. Even a quick glance at one of those LTE specs is enough to scare me a million miles away from a project like this.

Knowing how many people it takes to develop a eNodeB is even more impressive. Normally it would be n * 100 engineers (or even n * 1000) working on these projects.

Re: A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC

#49

Post by blinkingled »

tonfa wrote: post #39
blinkingled wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not be surprised if his intent is to first make money on his insanely hard and smart work and then make it open source later on. I think he has done something similar with another project of his - I just don't recall which one.

kqemu was originally closed source. Not sure why it was open sourced, competitive advantage went away?

Yeah, kqemu. As far as the reason, that definitely might be it. KVM killed the need for kqemu. May be Harald Welte and co will release a GPL implementation which will force Ballard to open source his. Evil genius :)
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