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Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative!

Sometime in 2002 Andrew Rodland was leafing through the Linux kernel code and came across a random comment in the function 'panic_blink' which described the function's purpose as to "tell the user who may be running in X and not see the console that we have panicked. This is to distinguish panics from 'real' lock-ups Could in theory send the panic message as Morse, but that is left as an exercise for the reader."

Rodland, "not being the kind to step down from a challenge (unless it's just really hard)", created a patch which modified the kernel to report a panic in Morse code.

In January 2009, Tomas Szepe updated Rodland's code for inclusion in Linux kernel version 2.6.29-rc1. "When enabled," he wrote in the comments, "this code will make a panicking kernel cry for help in Morse code, signalling on the LEDs of a possibly attached keyboard and/or a bleeper. You can enable/disable your Morse output devices of choice using the "panicMorse" kernel boot parameter." The Morse code modification may be dismissed as frivolous or playful, (and what is wrong with that?), but an SOS sent by a crashing kernel also has a practical application as a debugging tool for hardware and kernel developers.

Bruce Perens In these days of satellites, GPS and space hardware, Morse code no longer has the significance it once had as a means of calling for help or talking to someone on the other side of the planet. But well into this millenniumm, proficiency in Morse code was still a requirement for a radio ham license, and a surprising number of early contributors to Linux and other free software projects were hams, among the more famous being Alan Cox, who wrote the GW4PTS Morse tutor for Linux as far back as 1993, Ted Ts'o, whose call sign is VE7RJT, Bruce Perens (K6BP), and Bdale Garbee, who transmits as KB0G. Indeed, Perens led a successful campaign to remove the requirement for Morse code as a prerequisite for obtaining an amateur radio license, a law which he described as The World's Most Silly Technology Law.

All information should be free

Hams were the original hands-on hobbyists. The hobby dates back to the first decades of the 20th century. According to iceowl, a pseudonymous radio ham, "hams of the 1920s and 30s were at the cutting edge of technology. The transmitters and receivers they built in their own homes were state-of-the-art." Like hobbyists in many fields, radio hams often led the professionals in putting into effect some of the more adventurous aspects of their hobby.

Some of the appeal of talking to fellow hams in far flung corners of the world on a machine that you built yourself from vacuum tubes, wires and glue has evaporated over recent years, overtaken by the instant gratification provided by mobile phones, netbooks and VOIP. But the hobby continues in pursuit of more esoteric goals such as Moonbounce, communicating "with other stations by bouncing radio signals off the moon", as described here by Bdale Garbee, or DXing, "a geopolitical game played by lunatics with wire, radio transceivers, generators", the purpose of which is to "make a verifiable contact with someone in as many of the 335 geographic and political entities the American Radio Relay League recognizes as distinct countries." Iceowl concludes that "for many radio nuts, a magic crystal radio is what starts the infection. DXing is the disease in full swing." In fact, just like the start of personal computing, in the 1920s and 30s at the beginning public broadcasting it was common to overhear intense conversations about the best techniques for building crystal radios on the top decks of double decker buses and a number of magazines were available on the subject.

In the early days of home computers, the reliable way to connect to the internet was via KAQ9 NOS, originally written by Phil Karn in 1985 for CP/M and later ported to DOS for use with amateur packet radio. KAQ9 was Karn's call sign. "KA9Q NOS was only the second known implementation of the Internet protocols for low-end computers" after MIT's PC/IP, and "attracted many contributors and became very widely used throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s in amateur packet radio and in various educational projects. In a way," Karn wrote, "it was the Linux of its day." KAQ9 was Demon Internet's recommended dial-up software as late as 1995.

Although better known as an ex-Debian Leader and HP's open source and Linux chief technologist, Bdale Garbee was a contributor to KA9Q NOS, and says his best-known contribution was "the silly little mail program I wrote for KA9Q's NOS networking software called BM, though I suppose I'm more proud of my role as integrator and documentation author for the package prior to April 1989."

According to Perens "Ham radio can be very educational in a way the Internet can't touch: you can learn about analogue electronics, and about the synthesis of analogue and digital that is wireless data communications. You can build your own equipment from the ground up, while most computer folks only get to plug cards together. You can communicate around the world without an Internet - with nothing but air between you and the person you're talking to. You can even call up Mir or the Space Shuttle, or operate one of many satellites that hams have built and had launched as 'hitch-hikers' along with commercial space payloads."

Next: Mistrust authority - promote decentralisation

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