For those out of the loop these documents have a good introduction to how free software interacts with radio regulations

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/regulatory/st... https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/regulatory

TLDR manufacturers and "serious" companies won't touch anything that could potentially be configured to emit signals that your local government doesn't like. So Linux has to pretend it doesn't allow to do that (even though anyone with 2 braincells can patch it)

As these regulations change frequently, I am glad that linux makes it possible to update this database and the devices in the field. For example a portion of the 5.9ghz spectrum became available.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2993112/vint-cerf-and-...

So Linux takes government's side, not user's?

I'd call it "safe defaults".

It was about the radio and being able to modify the radio firmware.

As many modifications would void the FCC certifications of the device, due to changed parameters (more power, disabled anti-interface mitigations, out-of-band channels, etc.). This was avoided by making the radio firmware separate blobs, but there was a real danger of the whole device having to have signed firmware.

The main issue these days is the 5GHz band that might interfere with radar. That's mostly an issue outside near an airport, that is, it affects practically nobody, so the solution is to snoop the problematic bands and disable them when detecting radar signals, and use them otherwise for a bandwidth boost.

These days this seems to be mostly done in wifi chip firmware (that is then signed and under lock and wrap to make it tamper proof), but back in the day it was too easy to circumvent the mechanism.