Salon.com: Radio Free Software

“It’s the vision that elicited a beatific smile from Alan
Turing, a Bela Lugosi-like cackle from John von Neumann, and a
cannabis-tinged giggle from 1970s-era PC creators: Imagine a
universal machine, a computation device capable of mimicking the
functionality of any other machine.

“OK, now imagine the looks of terror on the faces of existing
machine makers. Imagine if the only thing stopping your handheld
PDA from simultaneously being a GPS receiver, phone, radio or
miniature TV was your willingness to download and install some free
software program.

“For Eric Blossom, founder of the GNU Radio project, the vision
plays itself over and over again, like a Möbius film strip. An
electrical engineer by trade, Blossom knows better than most the
thin barriers that separate one person’s garage-door opener from
another person’s global positioning satellite receiver. He also
knows the proprietary barriers that hinder technological
innovation. Rather than curse those walls, Blossom has decided to
gut the floor plan entirely with the help of free software. Sony,
Philips and Nokia be damned…”

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