[aprssig] OT: Yaesu to release digital amateur radio gear

[Steve Kostecke]

Tom Azlin N4ZPT said:

>Make that IMBE for first generation P25. Still a DVSI product.
>
>Royalties - seems like a bunch of urban myths here. The DVSI site says 
>no royalties or licensing fees for buying their vocoders chips and 
>putting them in radios. see http://www.dvsinc.com/products/a2020.htm for 
>an example.  I did not have to pay any royalty to buy the AMBE vocoder 
>chips. something like $8 for surface mount and $18 for DIP in volume. I 
>got mine for $23 each.
>
>Might be royalties to build to APCO Project 25, DMR, etc. standards. But 
>no royalties to build to the JARL standard or use an AMBE vocoder seems 
>to me.

What if DVSI decides to multiply the price per DIP by a factor of 10?

What if DVSI decides to not provide backwards compatibilty in the next
generation of AMBE?

This mania for a mode which is hostage to one company tells me that far
to many people have not learned from our collective experience with
Microsoft. It's like watching moths circling a flame.

-- 
73, Steve, K0STK // k0stk at arrl.net