On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 12:44:26PM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:

Now I get my trusty laptop with the EEPROM-based regdomain driver, and
travel to somewhere where the channel overlap with the Americas regdomain
the vendor used is such that the card can actually operate outside of the
requirements for the local government.   If I am lucky, it just won't allow
me to talk to everyone like what happens in Brazil.  If I am not, I could be
breaking the law.

Where, in the entire scenario above, was the regulatory information in the
EEPROM useful to me?  NEVER.  It was a hindrance in every step.

Hardware vendor representatives insist that regulaions should be
enforced as the product of both where you are (or claim to be) _and_
where the device was certified to operate when it was produced.  I have
no specific examples to cite of what might happen if e.g. a USA device
is operated on channel 13, but the hardware vendors insist that this
should not be allowed to happen.  "It works for me" anecdotes aside,
it seems like a bad idea to encourage (or fail to discourage) users
to override certified hardware regulatory settings.

If this is the only way to influence the regulatory enforcement
then your 2nd example is a valid.  But in that case moving to a
cfg80211-based regulatory enforcement seems like a better way to go.

John
-- 
John W. Linville
linville@tuxdriver.com