Last year the MadWiFi project abandoned their proprietary HAL in favor of using OpenHAL. OpenHAL is a open-source HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that was developed by OpenBSD for their Atheros WiFi driver. They also seized work on the earlier MadWiFi driver to focus on the new ath5k driver. This summer Atheros had then released the ath9k driver for 802.11n ASICs on Linux after hiring two of the MadWiFi developers.

This week Atheros Communications has made another step forward in enabling their wireless products on Linux. Atheros has released their HAL used for their 802.11a/b/g devices under the ISC. The ISC (or Internet Systems Consortium) is a BSD-derived free software license that is supported by the Free Software Foundation. The Atheros WiFi parts supported by this opened-up HAL include the 5210, 5211, 5211 FPGA, 5212, 5212 FPGA, 5312 WiSoC, 2315 WiSoC, 2317 WiSoC, 2313 WiSoC, 5212/2417, 5416, 9160, AR9100 WiSoC, 9280, and 9285.

This announcement was made on the Linux Kernel Mailing List and the source HAL package.