You, and everyone else for that matter, can go and buy a software defined radio (SDR) and play with a radio to your hearts liking. If there is a restriction on redistribution of open down to the radio firmware WiFi devices, then it's dumb. If there is none, please don't spread incorrect speculation that there is.

> You, and everyone else for that matter, can go and buy a software defined radio (SDR) and play with a radio to your hearts liking.

You almost certainly cant transmit legally, though (unless you have a amateur radio license, which lets you do all sorts of stuff with useful amounts of power).

That depends heavily on where you're transmitting (i.e what frequency and bandwidth you use) along with the power you're transmitting at.

First, as a ham radio operator, no, you can't just go and start blasting away from an SDR even in the ham bands. You have to follow strict rules, including a non-commercial content rule and you must not use encryption. The ham bands are for people to experiment with new radio technologies and more importantly communicate with one another using those technologies on a hobbyist level -- encryption and commercial use does not help those goals.

That being said, there are chunks of radio spectrum that are effectively "public domain" where you can transmit within certain ERP (effective radiated power) limits without the ham band restrictions on content, protocol, etc. Traditional WiFi lives in one -- the block set aside for microwave cooking devices, and therefore with a near-unusable noise floor for anything but short range communication like household WiFi.

"manufacturers are encouraged to design their systems to permit such software upgrades while ensuring security of the portion that controls compliance with the FCC technical requirements"