Intel PRO/Wireless is a series of
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
wireless products.
History
After the release of the wireless products called Intel Pro/Wireless 2100, 2200BG/2225BG/2915ABG and 3945ABG in 2005, Intel was criticized for not granting free
redistribution rights for the
firmware necessary to be included in the operating systems for the wireless devices to operate.
As a result of this, Intel became a target of campaigns to allow free operating systems to include binary firmware on terms acceptable to the open source community.
Linspire
Linspire (formerly Lindows) is a commercial operating system based on Debian and Ubuntu and currently owned by PC/OpenSystems LLC. It had been owned by Linspire. Inc. from 2001 to 2008, and then by Xandros from 2008 to 2017.
On July 1, 2008, Li ...
-
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
creator
Michael Robertson outlined the difficult position that Intel was in releasing to
Open Source, as Intel did not want to upset their large customer
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...
.
Theo de Raadt
Theo de Raadt (; ; born May 19, 1968) is a South African-born software engineer who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is the founder and leader of the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects and was also a founding member of NetBSD. In 2004, De Raadt ...
of
OpenBSD also claimed that Intel is being "an Open Source fraud" after an Intel employee presented a distorted view of the situation on an open-source conference.
In spite of the negative attention Intel received as a result of the wireless dealings, the binary firmware still has not gained a license compatible with free software principles.
Hardware
The successor to the PRO/Wireless series is Intel Wireless WiFi Link.
See also
*
Comparison of open-source wireless drivers
Wireless network cards for computers require control software to make them function ( firmware, device drivers). This is a list of the status of some open-source drivers for 802.11
IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area ne ...
*
FIPS 140
The 140 series of Federal Information Processing Standards ( FIPS) are U.S. government computer security standards that specify requirements for cryptography modules.
, FIPS 140-2 and FIPS 140-3 are both accepted as current and active. FIPS 14 ...
*
Wireless LAN
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office buildi ...
References
External links
Official webpage
Intel® Driver Update Utility
2200 Linux drivers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Intel PRO Wireless
PRO Wireless
Wireless networking
Intel products