[LEDE-DEV] [PATCH] mac80211: respect user-set regulatory domain by default

[Daniel Golle]

It turns out most device vendors don't set the correct country code
in their devices' on-flash-EEPROM sections as they apparently rather
provide a complete per-target-market firmware with patched drivers
instead of just setting the country code.
This results in the driver to incorrectly assume the value stored in
the on-flash-EERPOM (usually US or China) being the regulatory domain
inside which the device is being used.
To work around this issue, OpenWrt introduced the ATH_USER_REGD config
variable to decide during build whether or not to allow the user to
override the regulatory domain setting. This option, however, is not
enabled by default and thus ends up being disabled for snapshots builds
and released binaries.
As we know for a long time that most devices got borked regulatory
domain values set in their EEPROMs we should allow our users to respect
their local law (instead of just assume US or China laws).
Note that also the current default has great potential of users not
ever setting their regulatory domain and thus using inapproriate and
potentially illegal frequencies and/or tx-power settings

Signed-off-by: Daniel Golle <daniel at makrotopia.org>
---
Imho we should set World regulatory domain by default but also allow
users to set their actual regulatory domain (e.g. ETSI).
Obviously this will require the user to enter her country before being
able to use AP, IBSS and 802.11s mode in the 5 GHz bands.
Most wireless mesh communities' firmware projects are currently
implemented as source-wrappers around OpenWrt instead of just using the
SDK and ImageBuilder because of the official releases being useless in
most places in the world due to ATH_USER_REGD being disabled.

 package/kernel/mac80211/Makefile | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/package/kernel/mac80211/Makefile b/package/kernel/mac80211/Makefile
index 8b053d4..28da0ec 100644
--- a/package/kernel/mac80211/Makefile
+++ b/package/kernel/mac80211/Makefile
@@ -161,6 +161,7 @@ define KernelPackage/ath/config
   if PACKAGE_kmod-ath
 	config ATH_USER_REGD
 		bool "Force Atheros drivers to respect the user's regdomain settings"
+		default y
 		help
 		  Atheros' idea of regulatory handling is that the EEPROM of the card defines
 		  the regulatory limits and the user is only allowed to restrict the settings
-- 
2.8.2