There is nothing "secret" about the operation of basebands, or what they put out on the air. This is just the companies protecting trade secrets, trying to avoi

There is nothing "secret" about the operation of basebands, or what they put out on the air. This is just the companies protecting trade secrets, trying to avoid patent litigation, or just general open source averseness. Linux includes an open source regulatory information database that several open source wifi drivers use, so FCC licensing is not an issue for open source software either. It is not a form of DRM and does not require any "black boxing". Obviously you might be able to modify the software so you violate FCC rules, but you can also build your own radio transmitter and violate the FCC rules just as well. There's no special case for it being software. If you want to experiment on the radio bands, you can trivially get a ham radio license and modify the radio as you see fit, as long as you stay within the ham radio limits.