August 23, 2025 • 18 mins
Discover the M17 Project, an open-source digital voice and data protocol for amateur radio, and its recent removal from the MMDVM platform. Learn about M17’s innovative use of Codec 2, its impact on ham radio, and the reasons behind MMDVM’s decision. Stay updated on this evolving story in digital radio communication! #M17 #AmateurRadio #hamradio
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This video is sponsored by Ham Radio Prep - save 20% off of all of their courses with code JASON20 - https://hamradioprep.com
Article links:
- https://daily.hamweekly.com/2025/07/mmdvm-project-drops-support-for-m17-project/
- https://groups.io/g/OpenDV/message/2311
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M seventeen has been dropped from MMDVM support. It's no
longer included in WPSD, and there's been some turmoil about it.
Check this out. I actually got this in email, and
then about the same day, this was maybe three days
ago at the time of this recording, about the same day,
(00:21):
I start getting emails from a bunch of you guys
sending me information about what they were doing. One guy
sent me an article that Jerry from Connect Systems had
written about them trying to convince Jonathan Naylor, the main
guy in charge of MMDVM, that he's the one who
wants to drop it. And WPSD is what Bridgecom puts
(00:42):
on their hotspots, and that's no longer including MMDVM. But
that's outside of Bridgecomm's control. That's up to the WPSD developers.
And if it wasn't some kind of turmoil, then it
wouldn't be ham radio. So here's an article. This came
across my news story feed right about the time that
everyone started sending me emails about it. MMDVM, a popular
(01:04):
software and hardware project that powers many amateur rated hotspots,
has announced the intention to drop M seventeen Digital Voice
and Data Protocol as a supported mode. M seventeen is
the newest mode. I've had the M seventeen guys on
this channel a couple of times, interview them at a
couple of hamfests. It's a open source digital voice mode
built on CODEC two, which is an open source codec.
(01:28):
I'm going to talk about open source here in a
little bit. I think open source is both good and bad.
What do I mean by that? Stay tuned. Most of
your other digital voice protocols, d STAR, DMR, System Fusion
P twenty five and DS rely on a protocol called
either amb AMBE or some of the older ones that
are IMBE. Both of these protocols are owned by a
(01:49):
company called DVSI, and they make a chip that they
will license to anyone. You just have to buy it
from DVSI. That's why there's so many Chinese manufacturers making
DMR radios, because you just purchase a license from DVSI,
put the chip in your radio, and you're good. M
seventeen and CODEC too. There's a lot more to it
than that. I'm giving a very high level overview here.
M seventeen was the first one to not use a
(02:10):
DVS SID chip, not use an AMB chip, They're using
their own CODEC two, which is an open source digital
voice codec. And it's been an open source project up
until now. Let's keep reading. Inclusion of M seventeen among
the supported modes of MMDVN project has been a major
benefit to the current rate of adoption of M seventeen.
The first commercial radio supporting M seventeen shipped on the
(02:33):
second half of twenty twenty four, that is the CS
seven thy M seventeen, which I did a live stream
about the CS seven M seventeen, which is actually sitting
right here, So that was the first commercial radio being
sold with M seventeen adopted. The M seventeen project is
an open source digital voice protocol that is positioned as
an alternative digital modes that require the use of proprietary
(02:55):
encoders such as the dvsside chip and be an imbe
Codex is also an open source project that enables amateur
radio hotspots to support multiple digital voice protoclous incouding, d STAR,
DMRYSUP twenty five, NXDN and pok sag Okay, So if
we click on this announced link right here, it brings
us to a groups dot io list, and this is
a public message. I don't know if I'm even a
(03:17):
member of this list, but it is in the open
DV list. And this is Jonathan Naylor. I met Jonathan
at the I think hamvention two or three years ago.
It might have been ham kashon one of them. I
met him for the first time at ham Kash and
then later that year, maybe the next year, at hamvention,
did an interview with him. Nice guy, very very knowledgeable
in the world of MMDVM, since it is kind of
(03:39):
his project. So this is what he has to say.
This is an open forum, This is not a private
letter or anything like that, and so I'm reading public
information here. It is with great regret and a certain
amount of relief that I have removed M seventeen from MMDVM.
I have two sets of issues with M seventeen, administrative
and technical. Firstly, the administrative side of M seventeen is
very worrying, and even more so in recent months. A
(04:00):
couple of years ago, M seventeen received four hundred and
seventy eight thoy nine hundred dollars in grants from ARDC. Yes,
I had Steven and ed who are Americans? Because a
lot of the M seventeen stuff is being done out
of Sweden. I had steven Ed, who were their American counterparts,
on the live stream, two or three times to talk
about M seventeen, and I'm I don't believe steven Ed
(04:23):
or with that project anymore. Don't know why, not going
to speculate, Not sure what happened there. But during that
time was when ARDC had given them grant money to
fund this nonprofit open source project. Received four hundred and
seventy eight thousand, ne hundred dollars in grants from IRDC
developing seventeen. I feel very much that ARDC should take
(04:44):
a closer look at how the money was spent. Okay,
these are his words, not mine. The new M seventeen
Foundation isn't much better. A number of the M seventeen
star warts were excluded from it when it was formed.
I don't know what he's talking about here, I'm just
reading this text rather more sadly. The M seventeen Foundation
make no mention of a number of people organizations that
it helped them to get to where they were now.
(05:05):
Sounds like he wasn't acknowledged it and he's upset about it.
But I don't know. I don't know the backstory. Okay.
This is particularly troubling as it is rewriting of history
and not appointing praise where it is due. A lot
of people put a lot of time and effort in
M seventeen and to not get their due is dishonest
of the M seventeen teen. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
take Jonathan as word here and say that this is
(05:26):
all correct, and I agree with him if it is. Again,
I don't have any inside knowledge here, I'm just reading
it open for him. An example of this is the
fact that only one commercial entity has put their money
where their mouth is, and that is Jerry of Connect Systems. Okay,
we talked about him a minute ago. However, his contribution
to the project has been belittled online by the M
seventeen As his mind, despite it being the only way
(05:48):
to get a commercial M seventeen radio, he should be praise,
not dismissed out of hand. Okay, I don't know what
he's talking about there either. If somebody has a link
to these forums and articles that he's talking about where
this has happened, please send it to me. I don't
I haven't seen that myself. I don't browse forums much
these days, except for if it's on Reddit looking for
(06:08):
stuff to talk about new videos. But here we go.
I've heard rumors at M seventeen foundations looking at charging
commercial entities a royalty to include M seventeen in their
equipment and to use their logo. This is not in
the spirit of open source and has not been the
route followed by MMDBM. Now. I heard that rumor about
(06:30):
two months ago, maybe three months ago, something like that.
I heard that rumor, and I'm like, Okay, you hear
a lot of stuff. I mean, I get emails from
people about all kinds of stuff. People are excited about
new stuff, people are pissed off about something that happened,
or people are dismayed or frustrated or whatever. I get
all kinds of emails about all kinds of things. Generally speaking,
(06:50):
most of it is noise. Some of it is very
good information, and you'll usually end up seeing me make
videos on that. So I actually heard this rumor a
few months ago. I didn't really put much thought into it,
or much effort into I didn't put much faith in
it because I'm like, well, okay, if they are charging.
My understanding is ARDC only gives money to nonprofits, which
(07:15):
M seventeen was. M seventeen Foundation was a nonprofit as
far as I know, they still are. Maybe that's change.
I don't know, But if you are a for profit business,
ARDC will not grant you money. I know this firsthand
because I asked them for a grant because I do
a lot of teaching on my channel and they're like, well,
you make a profit, so we can't grant you money.
I'm like, okay, that's fair. I didn't hold any begrudges
(07:36):
against them because of that. Okay, this is their business model,
this is how they do things. They were actually quite
polite to me, and they said, hey, we really like
what you're doing, but we can't give you any money
because you're a for profit business. I'm like, yes, I am, yes,
that's true. I'm not a nonprofit. I never claim to
be a nonprofit, so I get it. So in that regard,
(07:57):
if M seventeen is going to start charging for their
low to feature their logo almost like a brand ad,
almost like a royalty, to put their open source codec
on commercial radio and sell it, that's not nonprofit anymore.
I'm gonna link this article below and I'm gonna read
more of it to you. But the first thing I'll say,
if you want to get involved in this hap hap
(08:17):
happy realm of amateur radio, or you want to get
an upgraded license, check out Ham Radio Prep. You can
save a twenty percent discount. Here's an example of me
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(08:39):
their new Ham Radio license or a Ham Radio License
upgrade over the last several years. They are a valuable
source in the community. But they are for profit business also,
so they're not going to get an ARDC grant. And
that's okay, that's okay. That's why you buy their product
and learn your stuff and get your upgrade and go
on save a discount at Ham Radio Prep with the
coupon code of Jason Twins. This goes on to say
(09:01):
he said he had two points. So the first one
was that the second one second secondly technical, when when
started in seventeen was proudly created by people who said
that they brought fresh thinking to digital voice. I would
say that it characterized more by a combination of arrogance
and stupidity. Again, not my words. I'm reading Jonathan's words here,
(09:22):
and this is on an open form, not to a
private letter he sent to me, because I know I'm
gonna get comments saying dude, you read that out loud. No, no, no,
he wrote it out loud, and I'm just rereading it. Okay,
here we go. Maybe all contact him and say, do
you want to do an interview about this? The fact
that none of them have ever operated digital voice radio,
let alone study the DV mode was seen as positive. Really,
(09:44):
I didn't know that none of them ever operated a
digital voice radio. Come on. One of the key members
designed it like a packet radio system, where each block
or packet of information needed to be received perfectly, so
no forward error correction? Is that what that means? This
is not a useful attribute to have. I would agree.
As originally designed, the synchronization patterns were literally one bit
(10:08):
different from one another, which is useless in an environment
where signals are routinely corrupted to a greater or lesser extent.
Over the first six months of my involvement, I managed
to get them to change the synchronization vectors to something
more reasonable, and got them to add a can a
channel access number to allow for some sort of channel
sharing between the M seventeen systems. I also added things
(10:31):
we take for granted another DV modes, like embedded GPS
datas short text messages. These both run in parallel to
the audio, like DSTAR or other DV modes. There were
still five big issues. A networking protocol designed before the
RF protocol is established included ideas that didn't make sense
in later development, very weekend of a message indicator, inclusion
of optional strong encryption. This is against regulations in most countries.
(10:54):
Shouldn't even be thought about. That's true if you're going
to design a digital voice mode for amateur radio like
system Fusion and d STAR war, DMR was not. That's
why DMR includes encryption, because DMR and P twenty five
both are commercial protocols that we adopted as amateur radio operators. Now,
sometimes I'll get people, well, since it wasn't made, since
(11:15):
it wasn't made for amateur radio, I'm not going to
use DMR well. Guess what. I don't know if you've
ever heard of a little mode called continuous waves CW
or a protocol called Morse code. But let me let
you in on a little secret. None of that was
made for amateur radio. AM and FM voice transmissions were
(11:37):
not made for amateur radio. RIDDY was not originally made
for amateur radio. FT eight was. So if you want
to drop DMR and non and commercial modes that were
adopted by amateur radio simply because they weren't made for
amateur radio, I hope that you only operate PSK thirty one,
JT sixty five, FT eight and these times of protocols
(12:00):
on HF because everything else that's on there pretty much
was not made for amateur radio. That's a stupid argument.
I'm sorry if I offended someone by saying that. I apologize.
It's a stupid argument to say that DMR and P
twenty five or shouldn't be an amateur radio because they
weren't made for amateur radio. Okay, But leaving that I
got it, that's a bit of a tangent. I got
(12:21):
on a bit of a tangent there, Okay. But Jonathan
is correct. He says that inclusion of optional strong encryption.
This is against regulations in most countries, shouldn't even be
thought about. Oddly enough, encryptid M seventeen wouldn't pass through
an MMDVM based repeater. So the reason that DMR and
P twenty five including encryption because they're commercial, but we're
(12:42):
not really supposed to be using them in amateur radio
on amateur radio frequencies. Now, I know some people aren't
going to I suspect some people are coming along in
the come as well' we use encryption all the time.
Nobody ever shows anything. Well, good for you, good for you,
congratulations on not being able to read your license protocols,
but good for you. Okay. Nevertheless, encryption at this point
in time is not really supposed to be used by
(13:04):
amateur radio operators on amateur radio frequencies. You want to
use encryption, get a commercial radio, get a commercial frequency,
you can use that on. So he's correct inclusion of
optional strong encryption. Why would you even put that in
M seventeen if you're actually making it for amateur radio
users and the amateur radio community as a whole. The
wrong type of FCC applied badly. That FEC FOURD error
(13:25):
correction is what that is? So few other things in
here in this article, and he says he signs off
with does anyone want to buy a CS seven seventeen.
I've got one. That one is sitting right here. I'm
not gonna. I don't want to. It's behind a bunch
of radios. I'm gonna knock everything off my desk if
I try to pull it out. But hey, what do
you guys think about this? Are you disappointed? I am disappointed.
(13:48):
Let's take the article, this article at face value. Okay,
let's assume for the moment, for the sake of this statement,
I'm about to make that everything said in this article
is true. It's disappointing that a group who started out
as open source and supportive of mateur radio and using
a codec like CODEC two, which is open source and
got an ARDC grant as an open source nonprofit entity,
(14:13):
is now shifting gears and trying to charge you for
and do encryption with this protocol, this M seventeen protocol.
If there's much I'm sure there's more to the story.
I have no doubt there's more to the story. Okay,
but if this is true, again, let's just take this
phase value for the sake of this argument, then yeah,
this is disappointing and I'm probably not going to be
(14:36):
interested in using M seventeen anymore myself, not that I
use it a lot anyway. I was looking forward to it.
I was looking forward to getting it in more commercial
radios and using it that way. I was happy about
the fact that WPSD, which is upgraded version of pie Star,
included it. You get a new hotspot from Bridgecom, or
you get a new hotspot any hotspot that runs WPSD
(14:57):
M seventeen is now, or it was included voice protocol,
so it was easy to talk on M seventeen and
get into the get into the system if you had
a radio for it. I'm, you know, hats off to
Jerriett Connect Systems for actually creating a commercial radio. And
I don't know, I don't know where that's going to go.
So we'll see. What do you guys think about this?
(15:17):
Whose side are you on? Do you think you're you
agree with them seventeen or do you agree with with Jonathan?
Because I know a couple of people are saying that
this is this is immature of Jonathan to act this way,
This is childish. We need to put this back in.
And I'm like, well, maybe maybe you're right, Maybe you're right,
maybe right, but here's something I'm want to close with this,
and no one is going to like what I well,
(15:39):
a lot of people, a lot of people are not
going to like what I have to say. This is
what you get with an open source project. Now that
obvious that MMDVM is an open source project, and it's
still going very strong, so obviously open source projects can work.
But I have seen many times many project fall flat
(16:00):
on their face two or three or five or six
years into the project. Open source, it's all open source,
it's all open So it's open source, great, wonderful, right
up until the point where the developers and the supporters
and the guys in charge of it get kind of
sick and tired of everyone complaining about it and just
basically drop the project and say, Nope, we're not going
(16:22):
to do this anymore. We're tired of working on it
twenty to twenty five hours a week and not being
paid for it. I got other things to do with
my time, like spend time with family or do my
real job, which actually puts food on the table for
my family, so and who can blame them? I don't
blame them at all. I like the idea of open source,
but I think the developers and the administrators and the
(16:45):
project leaders and the the beta testers and these people
who put all of this time into it, I don't
think they get proper recognition. I don't think they get
proper recognition. And a lot of times, and I've seen
it before. I could. I could name three open sources
projects right now that I've seen fall flat on their
face in the last ten years. I'm not gonna do
that because I'm not trying to I'm not trying to
(17:06):
throw anyone under the bus. I'm not trying to talk
about that. But maybe I'll just maybe I can make
a different video. Maybe I can make a new video
and say, hey, up, here's what I think you should
do with open source. Let's discuss it. I don't know
they're wanting to charge for this protocol now why it's
based on an open source codec digital Voice codec. They're
not implementing it correctly according to Jonathan anyway, So I
(17:28):
don't know. So it's is it gonna be? Is it
now gonna be a for profit project that they charge
for and try to build their own radios for, and
they're gonna become another another Yazoo or another Kinwood, which
is okay. That's okay. You want to build a radio
and charge for it, there's nothing wrong with that, But
don't claim you're gonna be open source if you're gonna
do that. Also, that's my opinion. A lot more to
(17:50):
it than that. I could talk for a little bit longer,
but there's a there's a mud Dauber in my hamshack.
So I'm gonna sign off. Guys seventy three, i'd really
want to know what your comments are. Put a comment
in the VID your blow. Catch you next time.
M seventeen has been dropped from MMDVM support. It's no
longer included in WPSD, and there's been some turmoil about it.
Check this out. I actually got this in email, and
then about the same day, this was maybe three days
ago at the time of this recording, about the same day,
(00:21):
I start getting emails from a bunch of you guys
sending me information about what they were doing. One guy
sent me an article that Jerry from Connect Systems had
written about them trying to convince Jonathan Naylor, the main
guy in charge of MMDVM, that he's the one who
wants to drop it. And WPSD is what Bridgecom puts
(00:42):
on their hotspots, and that's no longer including MMDVM. But
that's outside of Bridgecomm's control. That's up to the WPSD developers.
And if it wasn't some kind of turmoil, then it
wouldn't be ham radio. So here's an article. This came
across my news story feed right about the time that
everyone started sending me emails about it. MMDVM, a popular
(01:04):
software and hardware project that powers many amateur rated hotspots,
has announced the intention to drop M seventeen Digital Voice
and Data Protocol as a supported mode. M seventeen is
the newest mode. I've had the M seventeen guys on
this channel a couple of times, interview them at a
couple of hamfests. It's a open source digital voice mode
built on CODEC two, which is an open source codec.
(01:28):
I'm going to talk about open source here in a
little bit. I think open source is both good and bad.
What do I mean by that? Stay tuned. Most of
your other digital voice protocols, d STAR, DMR, System Fusion
P twenty five and DS rely on a protocol called
either amb AMBE or some of the older ones that
are IMBE. Both of these protocols are owned by a
(01:49):
company called DVSI, and they make a chip that they
will license to anyone. You just have to buy it
from DVSI. That's why there's so many Chinese manufacturers making
DMR radios, because you just purchase a license from DVSI,
put the chip in your radio, and you're good. M
seventeen and CODEC too. There's a lot more to it
than that. I'm giving a very high level overview here.
M seventeen was the first one to not use a
(02:10):
DVS SID chip, not use an AMB chip, They're using
their own CODEC two, which is an open source digital
voice codec. And it's been an open source project up
until now. Let's keep reading. Inclusion of M seventeen among
the supported modes of MMDVN project has been a major
benefit to the current rate of adoption of M seventeen.
The first commercial radio supporting M seventeen shipped on the
(02:33):
second half of twenty twenty four, that is the CS
seven thy M seventeen, which I did a live stream
about the CS seven M seventeen, which is actually sitting
right here, So that was the first commercial radio being
sold with M seventeen adopted. The M seventeen project is
an open source digital voice protocol that is positioned as
an alternative digital modes that require the use of proprietary
(02:55):
encoders such as the dvsside chip and be an imbe
Codex is also an open source project that enables amateur
radio hotspots to support multiple digital voice protoclous incouding, d STAR,
DMRYSUP twenty five, NXDN and pok sag Okay, So if
we click on this announced link right here, it brings
us to a groups dot io list, and this is
a public message. I don't know if I'm even a
(03:17):
member of this list, but it is in the open
DV list. And this is Jonathan Naylor. I met Jonathan
at the I think hamvention two or three years ago.
It might have been ham kashon one of them. I
met him for the first time at ham Kash and
then later that year, maybe the next year, at hamvention,
did an interview with him. Nice guy, very very knowledgeable
in the world of MMDVM, since it is kind of
(03:39):
his project. So this is what he has to say.
This is an open forum, This is not a private
letter or anything like that, and so I'm reading public
information here. It is with great regret and a certain
amount of relief that I have removed M seventeen from MMDVM.
I have two sets of issues with M seventeen, administrative
and technical. Firstly, the administrative side of M seventeen is
very worrying, and even more so in recent months. A
(04:00):
couple of years ago, M seventeen received four hundred and
seventy eight thoy nine hundred dollars in grants from ARDC. Yes,
I had Steven and ed who are Americans? Because a
lot of the M seventeen stuff is being done out
of Sweden. I had steven Ed, who were their American counterparts,
on the live stream, two or three times to talk
about M seventeen, and I'm I don't believe steven Ed
(04:23):
or with that project anymore. Don't know why, not going
to speculate, Not sure what happened there. But during that
time was when ARDC had given them grant money to
fund this nonprofit open source project. Received four hundred and
seventy eight thousand, ne hundred dollars in grants from IRDC
developing seventeen. I feel very much that ARDC should take
(04:44):
a closer look at how the money was spent. Okay,
these are his words, not mine. The new M seventeen
Foundation isn't much better. A number of the M seventeen
star warts were excluded from it when it was formed.
I don't know what he's talking about here, I'm just
reading this text rather more sadly. The M seventeen Foundation
make no mention of a number of people organizations that
it helped them to get to where they were now.
(05:05):
Sounds like he wasn't acknowledged it and he's upset about it.
But I don't know. I don't know the backstory. Okay.
This is particularly troubling as it is rewriting of history
and not appointing praise where it is due. A lot
of people put a lot of time and effort in
M seventeen and to not get their due is dishonest
of the M seventeen teen. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
take Jonathan as word here and say that this is
(05:26):
all correct, and I agree with him if it is. Again,
I don't have any inside knowledge here, I'm just reading
it open for him. An example of this is the
fact that only one commercial entity has put their money
where their mouth is, and that is Jerry of Connect Systems. Okay,
we talked about him a minute ago. However, his contribution
to the project has been belittled online by the M
seventeen As his mind, despite it being the only way
(05:48):
to get a commercial M seventeen radio, he should be praise,
not dismissed out of hand. Okay, I don't know what
he's talking about there either. If somebody has a link
to these forums and articles that he's talking about where
this has happened, please send it to me. I don't
I haven't seen that myself. I don't browse forums much
these days, except for if it's on Reddit looking for
(06:08):
stuff to talk about new videos. But here we go.
I've heard rumors at M seventeen foundations looking at charging
commercial entities a royalty to include M seventeen in their
equipment and to use their logo. This is not in
the spirit of open source and has not been the
route followed by MMDBM. Now. I heard that rumor about
(06:30):
two months ago, maybe three months ago, something like that.
I heard that rumor, and I'm like, Okay, you hear
a lot of stuff. I mean, I get emails from
people about all kinds of stuff. People are excited about
new stuff, people are pissed off about something that happened,
or people are dismayed or frustrated or whatever. I get
all kinds of emails about all kinds of things. Generally speaking,
(06:50):
most of it is noise. Some of it is very
good information, and you'll usually end up seeing me make
videos on that. So I actually heard this rumor a
few months ago. I didn't really put much thought into it,
or much effort into I didn't put much faith in
it because I'm like, well, okay, if they are charging.
My understanding is ARDC only gives money to nonprofits, which
(07:15):
M seventeen was. M seventeen Foundation was a nonprofit as
far as I know, they still are. Maybe that's change.
I don't know, But if you are a for profit business,
ARDC will not grant you money. I know this firsthand
because I asked them for a grant because I do
a lot of teaching on my channel and they're like, well,
you make a profit, so we can't grant you money.
I'm like, okay, that's fair. I didn't hold any begrudges
(07:36):
against them because of that. Okay, this is their business model,
this is how they do things. They were actually quite
polite to me, and they said, hey, we really like
what you're doing, but we can't give you any money
because you're a for profit business. I'm like, yes, I am, yes,
that's true. I'm not a nonprofit. I never claim to
be a nonprofit, so I get it. So in that regard,
(07:57):
if M seventeen is going to start charging for their
low to feature their logo almost like a brand ad,
almost like a royalty, to put their open source codec
on commercial radio and sell it, that's not nonprofit anymore.
I'm gonna link this article below and I'm gonna read
more of it to you. But the first thing I'll say,
if you want to get involved in this hap hap
(08:17):
happy realm of amateur radio, or you want to get
an upgraded license, check out Ham Radio Prep. You can
save a twenty percent discount. Here's an example of me
being a for profit business. You can save a twenty
percent discount off of all of Ham Radio Preps courses
with the coupon code of Jason twenty. Ham Radio Prep
has helped get hundreds, tens of thousands really people with
(08:39):
their new Ham Radio license or a Ham Radio License
upgrade over the last several years. They are a valuable
source in the community. But they are for profit business also,
so they're not going to get an ARDC grant. And
that's okay, that's okay. That's why you buy their product
and learn your stuff and get your upgrade and go
on save a discount at Ham Radio Prep with the
coupon code of Jason Twins. This goes on to say
(09:01):
he said he had two points. So the first one
was that the second one second secondly technical, when when
started in seventeen was proudly created by people who said
that they brought fresh thinking to digital voice. I would
say that it characterized more by a combination of arrogance
and stupidity. Again, not my words. I'm reading Jonathan's words here,
(09:22):
and this is on an open form, not to a
private letter he sent to me, because I know I'm
gonna get comments saying dude, you read that out loud. No, no, no,
he wrote it out loud, and I'm just rereading it. Okay,
here we go. Maybe all contact him and say, do
you want to do an interview about this? The fact
that none of them have ever operated digital voice radio,
let alone study the DV mode was seen as positive. Really,
(09:44):
I didn't know that none of them ever operated a
digital voice radio. Come on. One of the key members
designed it like a packet radio system, where each block
or packet of information needed to be received perfectly, so
no forward error correction? Is that what that means? This
is not a useful attribute to have. I would agree.
As originally designed, the synchronization patterns were literally one bit
(10:08):
different from one another, which is useless in an environment
where signals are routinely corrupted to a greater or lesser extent.
Over the first six months of my involvement, I managed
to get them to change the synchronization vectors to something
more reasonable, and got them to add a can a
channel access number to allow for some sort of channel
sharing between the M seventeen systems. I also added things
(10:31):
we take for granted another DV modes, like embedded GPS
datas short text messages. These both run in parallel to
the audio, like DSTAR or other DV modes. There were
still five big issues. A networking protocol designed before the
RF protocol is established included ideas that didn't make sense
in later development, very weekend of a message indicator, inclusion
of optional strong encryption. This is against regulations in most countries.
(10:54):
Shouldn't even be thought about. That's true if you're going
to design a digital voice mode for amateur radio like
system Fusion and d STAR war, DMR was not. That's
why DMR includes encryption, because DMR and P twenty five
both are commercial protocols that we adopted as amateur radio operators. Now,
sometimes I'll get people, well, since it wasn't made, since
(11:15):
it wasn't made for amateur radio, I'm not going to
use DMR well. Guess what. I don't know if you've
ever heard of a little mode called continuous waves CW
or a protocol called Morse code. But let me let
you in on a little secret. None of that was
made for amateur radio. AM and FM voice transmissions were
(11:37):
not made for amateur radio. RIDDY was not originally made
for amateur radio. FT eight was. So if you want
to drop DMR and non and commercial modes that were
adopted by amateur radio simply because they weren't made for
amateur radio, I hope that you only operate PSK thirty one,
JT sixty five, FT eight and these times of protocols
(12:00):
on HF because everything else that's on there pretty much
was not made for amateur radio. That's a stupid argument.
I'm sorry if I offended someone by saying that. I apologize.
It's a stupid argument to say that DMR and P
twenty five or shouldn't be an amateur radio because they
weren't made for amateur radio. Okay, But leaving that I
got it, that's a bit of a tangent. I got
(12:21):
on a bit of a tangent there, Okay. But Jonathan
is correct. He says that inclusion of optional strong encryption.
This is against regulations in most countries, shouldn't even be
thought about. Oddly enough, encryptid M seventeen wouldn't pass through
an MMDVM based repeater. So the reason that DMR and
P twenty five including encryption because they're commercial, but we're
(12:42):
not really supposed to be using them in amateur radio
on amateur radio frequencies. Now, I know some people aren't
going to I suspect some people are coming along in
the come as well' we use encryption all the time.
Nobody ever shows anything. Well, good for you, good for you,
congratulations on not being able to read your license protocols,
but good for you. Okay. Nevertheless, encryption at this point
in time is not really supposed to be used by
(13:04):
amateur radio operators on amateur radio frequencies. You want to
use encryption, get a commercial radio, get a commercial frequency,
you can use that on. So he's correct inclusion of
optional strong encryption. Why would you even put that in
M seventeen if you're actually making it for amateur radio
users and the amateur radio community as a whole. The
wrong type of FCC applied badly. That FEC FOURD error
(13:25):
correction is what that is? So few other things in
here in this article, and he says he signs off
with does anyone want to buy a CS seven seventeen.
I've got one. That one is sitting right here. I'm
not gonna. I don't want to. It's behind a bunch
of radios. I'm gonna knock everything off my desk if
I try to pull it out. But hey, what do
you guys think about this? Are you disappointed? I am disappointed.
(13:48):
Let's take the article, this article at face value. Okay,
let's assume for the moment, for the sake of this statement,
I'm about to make that everything said in this article
is true. It's disappointing that a group who started out
as open source and supportive of mateur radio and using
a codec like CODEC two, which is open source and
got an ARDC grant as an open source nonprofit entity,
(14:13):
is now shifting gears and trying to charge you for
and do encryption with this protocol, this M seventeen protocol.
If there's much I'm sure there's more to the story.
I have no doubt there's more to the story. Okay,
but if this is true, again, let's just take this
phase value for the sake of this argument, then yeah,
this is disappointing and I'm probably not going to be
(14:36):
interested in using M seventeen anymore myself, not that I
use it a lot anyway. I was looking forward to it.
I was looking forward to getting it in more commercial
radios and using it that way. I was happy about
the fact that WPSD, which is upgraded version of pie Star,
included it. You get a new hotspot from Bridgecom, or
you get a new hotspot any hotspot that runs WPSD
(14:57):
M seventeen is now, or it was included voice protocol,
so it was easy to talk on M seventeen and
get into the get into the system if you had
a radio for it. I'm, you know, hats off to
Jerriett Connect Systems for actually creating a commercial radio. And
I don't know, I don't know where that's going to go.
So we'll see. What do you guys think about this?
(15:17):
Whose side are you on? Do you think you're you
agree with them seventeen or do you agree with with Jonathan?
Because I know a couple of people are saying that
this is this is immature of Jonathan to act this way,
This is childish. We need to put this back in.
And I'm like, well, maybe maybe you're right, Maybe you're right,
maybe right, but here's something I'm want to close with this,
and no one is going to like what I well,
(15:39):
a lot of people, a lot of people are not
going to like what I have to say. This is
what you get with an open source project. Now that
obvious that MMDVM is an open source project, and it's
still going very strong, so obviously open source projects can work.
But I have seen many times many project fall flat
(16:00):
on their face two or three or five or six
years into the project. Open source, it's all open source,
it's all open So it's open source, great, wonderful, right
up until the point where the developers and the supporters
and the guys in charge of it get kind of
sick and tired of everyone complaining about it and just
basically drop the project and say, Nope, we're not going
(16:22):
to do this anymore. We're tired of working on it
twenty to twenty five hours a week and not being
paid for it. I got other things to do with
my time, like spend time with family or do my
real job, which actually puts food on the table for
my family, so and who can blame them? I don't
blame them at all. I like the idea of open source,
but I think the developers and the administrators and the
(16:45):
project leaders and the the beta testers and these people
who put all of this time into it, I don't
think they get proper recognition. I don't think they get
proper recognition. And a lot of times, and I've seen
it before. I could. I could name three open sources
projects right now that I've seen fall flat on their
face in the last ten years. I'm not gonna do
that because I'm not trying to I'm not trying to
(17:06):
throw anyone under the bus. I'm not trying to talk
about that. But maybe I'll just maybe I can make
a different video. Maybe I can make a new video
and say, hey, up, here's what I think you should
do with open source. Let's discuss it. I don't know
they're wanting to charge for this protocol now why it's
based on an open source codec digital Voice codec. They're
not implementing it correctly according to Jonathan anyway, So I
(17:28):
don't know. So it's is it gonna be? Is it
now gonna be a for profit project that they charge
for and try to build their own radios for, and
they're gonna become another another Yazoo or another Kinwood, which
is okay. That's okay. You want to build a radio
and charge for it, there's nothing wrong with that, But
don't claim you're gonna be open source if you're gonna
do that. Also, that's my opinion. A lot more to
(17:50):
it than that. I could talk for a little bit longer,
but there's a there's a mud Dauber in my hamshack.
So I'm gonna sign off. Guys seventy three, i'd really
want to know what your comments are. Put a comment
in the VID your blow. Catch you next time.
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