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The context is more or less obvious from "FCC". We know from those three letters that it's not about, say, banning Ubuntu from your PC.

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But the FCC regulates a great deal of equipment, and this is only targeting a very specific subset of that equipment - not all of it. I was initially pretty concerned as I'm a Ham radio operator, but this really does not concern me overly much now that it's clear it's:

A) SDR/Modular only B) Consumer only

Quite a bit of "consumer" equipment is halfway to an SDR already, and a ruling like this would mean you could never write or release FOSS firmware for a wireless card. (Note that wireless cards with FOSS firmware exist today.)

Yeah - it sucks and this FCC rules is concerning, but not as concerning as I initially thought it was.

Don't get me wrong - I think this is a stupid rule, but I just don't think it's as big a deal as the article, and title in particular, make it out to be.

and you can be certain that companies that make wireless routers and cellphones will take the easy route out and fully lock things down.

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