@Ea5iyl @clacke @hb9hox ITU Radio Regulations Edition of 2020 Vol I article 25.2A is probably what you're refering to:

"Transmissions between amateur stations of different countries shall not be encoded for the purpose of obscuring their meaning, except for control signals exchanged between earth command stations and space stations in the amateur-satellite service."

Here your argument seems to be that a modulation and/or encoding a message is equal to obscuring a meaning?

@hb9hox @Ea5iyl I'm advocate of open source also. But it is not simple. If you do it for your freetime then the burden of maintenance is a real chore. And you still need to have your day job. Alternative is to sell your product and work it full time to pay the bills.

Innovation (closed source or not) is the key. Moving forward is key. Competition is good. If someone steps up with FOSS competitor for VARA: Good! But if not then we continue using VARA because it gets the job done.

@clacke @Ea5iyl @hb9hox It's a idiom for accomplishing something.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/(someone%2fsomething)+gets+the+job+done

@Ea5iyl @clacke @hb9hox VARA HF accomplishes a successful digital two way communication between two amateur radio stations.

I can send Winlink email from my portable station in Oulu to a station in Oslo using just 10W of power. That's 1000km QSO.

The speed is adjust automatically to conditions. With good propagation I can see nice transfer speeds, but with bad propagation or interference it still can function, but with lower speeds.

I've not yet found another tool with similar performance.

@Ea5iyl @clacke @hb9hox I'd love to see volunteers taking the challenge and start implementing open source version or competing alternative to VARA.

But while we're waiting, I'm happy to see the project continuously evolving and being used in real world.

We are not entitled to push down a project if at the same time we do not ourselves step up and provide alternative. There's too much hate and negativity in the world already.

Nobody is forced to use it. And many users area happy with it.