Surely it's possible to maintain control over that while still publishing the source code? Seems like security by obscurity.
> Seems like security by obscurity.
There are legal standards to meet around protecting the system from users modifying things like output power. They don’t literally say that the source code must be private, of course, but keeping it closed source makes it much easier to demonstrate that you were not making it easy for people to exceed the regulatory limits.
If you document the registers for setting output power (for example) then you’re giving the end user a roadmap for changing output power.
Technically they could publish the source in that case but I think some patents would prevent them from doing this. Radio stuff is riddled with patents. Also most likely the "why would we" reason. There is no benefit for the manufacturer.
If it's concerning their own patents, no need to hide the source code. A patent is literally "letters patent" or public description of an invention. Trade secrets on the other hand I could understand.
I'm surprised how much they were able to open source as-is. I think part of that is that the SoCs powering the raspberry are kinda 'old news', definitely not the bleeding edge kind of embedded tech. The first raspberry basically happened because Broadcom had a whole bunch of old chips they weren't able to sell. Only when it took off they started making some actually for the purpose.