Emergency communication: I look at the activities of our German society DARC and find large conceptional holes at the very base. This starts with ignoring the personal preparations like supplies for a few days to weeks for every family. Or: How should any alarm or coordination work when standard communication means have broken down? Remember that this is no topic only within the ham radio community: Emergency authorities must be able to easily contact the ham radio groups in a standard way. The central ham radio organization must be able to alarm their people etc. For this for example a JS8Call infrastructure could be helpful: The authorities contact one of two or three hams that had been named before. Those hams get a JS8Call TRX that interfaces with their smart phone. The JS8Call TRX has an alarm buzzer and is battery powered. Group calls could be used to alarm people. Point-to-point contacts can be used to request contacts with more conventional ham radio means. In their stand-by mode these transceivers could be operated with a minimum of power and a very basic antenna. Consider a form factor like a portable radio.
Alexander - Interesting you should mention notification / message distribution. That is indeed an issue. The "lost technology" of paging still has some utility (it's still used in the US by medical professionals because it works nearly 100% of the time, where mobile telephone texting does not (at least from commercial carriers with sites external to the hospital). There is a project called Distributed Amateur Paging Network (DAPNET) - https://hampager.de/#/ that I haven't dived very deeply into, but that may have some promise for "notification", especially now that we have very inexpensive compute / radio receive technology. It seems to me that we could easily replicate an alphanumeric pager with a small software defined receiver and perhaps a computer as simple as a microcontroller.
I read the letter N2AA wrote and that you posted just now, and I saw a few days ago that Ria had stepped down. I wasn't sure why, and to be honest I still haven't investigated it, but I'll give you my take on the ARRL and some of its motives.
Their standpoint on "radio active hams" seems to be predicated on whether or not they are ARRL members, by using the math that most active hams are members of the ARRL. How could the ARRL determine how many "radio active hams" there really are? This is a non-starter for me, and I can see where this is going. This is about memberships and money. Because it seems to me, what David is really saying is, 'We helped make licensing easier, to obtain more licenses/memberships, but they get their license and we never hear from them again; evidenced by the number of licenses having increased, but the number of ARRL memberships hasn't increased along with them.' He's disguising his language "active" = member.
I've been a member since getting my license a few years ago, but I only donate for the advocacy of spectrum and the magazine. The ARRL is akin to the NRA and other lobbyist groups and organizations. Most importantly, the ARRL is a business, and makes decisions based on what businesses are about. Money. This idea that DEI is some path to more money is a disillusion that seems to be sweeping across the corporate landscape. "Go woke, go broke" is a common catchphrase that has some merit. The fact is, manipulating somethings natural course to effect the outcome leads to unintended consequences. The matter of diversity in ham radio is a complex system, just as the diversity issue in general. As a matter of course, the "problem" would eventually self-correct, as it's been doing for decades, and getting in there and turning knobs and pushing buttons isn't going to help.
Old white men making up the majority of ham radio is not a problem that needs fixed, and is not a result of some mechanism of oppression. As I see it, there is complete freedom and inclusion in who can obtain a license, and the rest is up to them. Yes, it would appear that there are "gatekeepers" that think they're the true essence of ham radio. But these folks need to be ignored, and for the most part they are. I've had to deal with them starting out, but I quickly realized that I need not worry about their opinions. It's not a fraternity, a guild, or a club. No one is hand-picked and there is no interview process. We're free to do what we want after getting licensed, with in the law of course.
To sum it up, the ARRL is looking for ways to pull people in, not for amateur radio's sake, but for their own. Looking to project inclusiveness as a rallying cry is the wrong route in my opinion. It's not genuine and it shows. They need to slow their roll when it comes to their outreach efforts and focus on lobbying. They continue to interject themselves into matters they have no business getting into and it's having a negative effect on the hobby. Just my opinion.
James - I agree that the ARRL's characterization of ARRL members as "active" is at best... incomplete. Many inactive Amateur Radio Operators I've met maintain their ARRL membership to support Amateur Radio and receive QST, while many ACTIVE Amateur Radio Operators I've met choose not to be ARRL members because they don't see any direct benefit to them or they don't feel that the ARRL is actually effective in its stated mission to promote and protect Amateur Radio. The $50 / year "membership dues" plays a role in choosing not be a member of ARRL also.
You said:
Old white men making up the majority of ham radio is not a problem that needs fixed...
I disagree - the lack of diversity in Amateur Radio IS a problem that definitely DOES need to be fixed... IF we want Amateur Radio, especially its spectrum allocations, to continue into the future. The "old white men" will soon die out (as we agree... they're OLD), and there simply isn't Amateur Radio if there aren't any (or very few) Amateur Radio OPERATORS (remaining).
To attract today's youth to become involved in Amateur Radio, it's my observation that today's youth value diversity and if they don't see diversity reflected in an activity or organization, they often choose not to participate in that activity or organization.
You said:
... and is not a result of some mechanism of oppression.
I agree that the current lack of diversity in Amateur Radio is not a result of "some mechanism of oppression" - it's simply a historic demographic.
We in Amateur Radio can DO something about that current lack of diversity - we can all ENCOURAGE youth... ALL youth, to check out Amateur Radio and perhaps see themselves involved in it.
Great job as usual, and thank you for the recommendation! In addition to the thoughtful, opposite-of-social-media format of Substack, I think one of its greatest features are the network effects. It reminds me a bit of the old blogroll days. I hope that we can get more hams both writing and commenting here, so that we can better leverage that network effect.
Thanks for the link the RFBitBanger. I had not heard of it yet. I'll be watching that one for sure. It's now the SDR era in amateur radio, for good reason, but I think that classic analog RF design should never truly go away. That's the big impetus for Project Yamhill. Well, that plus the new solar cycle. :)
Jason - As I've said in Zero Retries, I don't quite understand some of (or the quantity...) of the many, many "itches" that are driving the wide diversity of design of SO many low-power HF radios, but I do admire the varying technical approaches. Your Project Yamhill is a unique approach for (as I understand it) a very modular, building block approach to building (and understanding) the various stages of a low-power HF radio. The RFBitBanger is another unique technical approach by trying to minimize the complexity of the individual components as well as minimize the overall design and construction complexity with the goal of maximizing the possibility that the RFBitBanger CAN be reproduced from components that will hopefully remain widely available.
One of my favorite examples of a unique approach to a low-power HF radio is the PrepComm DMX-40 Morse Code Transceiver - https://www.preppcomm.com/products/dmx-40-transceiver. The radio does all of the Morse Code (CW) work for you - just tune, type, and read the traffic.
Amateur Radio is such a big, interesting hobby with endless technological innovation occuring constantly. Thanks for contributing to the technological innovation with Project Yamhill and YOUR newsletter!
Over here we also have a DAPNET implementation, often combined with HAMNET, our portion of 44net. See https://hamnetdb.net. My mentioning of JS8Call stems from the fact that JS8Call uses shortwave and our pagers work in the 70cm band. My combination of JS8Call and smartphone has other possibilities like "silent alarms": The national emergency control center of DARC could send repeated group calls to all participants that then reply via WLAN and the internet connection of the respective ham. If this answer does not come, the ham could be informed about the problem. As long as only JS8Call is involved, no outdoor antenna should be needed.
Alexander - You make a very good point about the complementary nature of paging (DAPNET) on VHF / UHF and JS8Call on HF. I was aware of the robust, low transmit power capability, but as you point out, it's robust enough to implement with an indoor antenna.
Like I alluded to before, these issues will resolve themselves without intervention. We all value diversity and it's not just a novel youth movement. Youth are not shying away from amateur radio because of DEI or the lack thereof. If you have solid evidence of this, I'd be open to see it here. Perhaps you can present it in Zero Retries. I'm not challenging you, as I do see the future is bleak for amateur radio if there isn't a change in outreach. But the discussion needs to be based in true reality. Amateur radio is pretty big and growing in developing countries such as India and China, and I don't they're concerned with diversity nearly as much as we are, but granted, they're a more homogeneous society.
The bottom-line is that amateur radio is dying in the western world because the youth see no value in it. Unless that changes, we'll have what we have. Cell phones and internet service everywhere we go isn't doing amateur radio any favors. There's also so many more distractions in day-to-day life, kids aren't going to take the time. That's the crux of the issue, in my opinion, not a lack of diversity. The diversity thing is far too overused and seems to be a hot topic. Like a panic button that is presented, but one that doesn't really do anything besides provide temporary relief. CRT has infiltrated our minds and institutions of all kinds to look for oppression at every turn. Even where it isn't.
In short, we need to focus on the real reasons that folks (not just the youth) aren't drawn to learn and use ham radio. It's an honest discussion and it's important that we continue having it for the sake of our passion and arguably for the sake of our overall safety. I could make an argument for EmComm as being the savior of ham radio as things escalate into chaos more and more each day. Presenting radio as a means of free speech has a solid argument as well and should be on the table.
Apr 3, 2023·edited Apr 3, 2023Liked by Steve Stroh N8GNJ
In middle of Manhattan, I've had to adapt to living on a low floor with a high noise floor--especially after building management dismantled my HF and VHF antennas. One way is with LoRa devices, e.g., https://github.com/flengyel/RYLR998-LoRa in the 33cm ISM/ham band. LoRa, as everyone subscribed likely knows, is suitable for long-range, low-power, low-bandwidth communications below the noise floor and is used in off-grid communication and remote sensing. As for operating in the Upper West Side during one of the all-encompassing disasters you mention, my plan is to slump forward in my chair. de WM2D.
F - Low rise dwelling, in Manhattan... that sounds like the definition of human-made radio frequency noise pollution! I think that LoRa and especially mesh systems like Austin Mesh https://austinmesh.org/ have a lot of promise. My vision for Amateur Radio includes people who have the ability to host "multiport" systems and share their resources so that you can come connect on one one system - for you, LoRa Mesh on 33 cm (902 - 928 MHz) and out on another port such as, say Winlink on HF. Another "mitigation" I imagine for near-future Amateur Radio is that now that solar panels have reasonable power output and small sizes, and batteries are compact and powerful, it's possible to locate remote nodes with no power or wired connectivity. Perhaps a rooftop on a friend's building where they have a tiny bit of "colo" space? I saw one interesting hack where they parked a vehicle on the top deck of a parking garage, put a flexible solar panel on the dashboard, and had a battery and a low-powered digipeater in the back seat. Perhaps think of your situation as a stimulus for innovation in constrained Amateur Radio Operations :-)
"Perhaps think of your situation as a stimulus for innovation in constrained Amateur Radio Operations :-)"
That is exactly how I see my situation. The proliferation of open-source ham radio software, the availability of cheap hardware (e.g., the REYAX RYLR998 is $14 on Amazon), affordable consumer 3D printing, etc., presents numerous opportunities for development and experimentation in amateur radio--with a little research. I look forward to implementing such multiport systems, hand-held LoRa text communicators and off-grid radios in the future. I hope to get my hands on a REYAX RYLR993_Lite LoRaWan module, which is compatible with the 998. My next project is to check whether a fully functional GNU Radio software-defined radio (SDR) implementation of a LoRa transceiver is compatible with the RYLR998 (see https://github.com/tapparelj/gr-lora_sdr and https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.08208). I also plan to try out a flat panel RFID ISM band antenna--these can provide 8-9db gain and can handle up to 15 W--I'm running 22dbm max input with these modules. As for a friend's roof--assuming I had any friends--the amateur radio club at WABC a couple blocks away had colo space in a building with roof antennas over 500 feet up--it's another world at that height. I think the club is close to dissolution, unfortunately
F - That is a fascinating suite of projects you have lined up! One of the things that has changed over the past few years regarding systems mounted on rooftops that, with careful design, they can be self-sufficient with solar panels and good batteries. I can imagine one of those big steel "job boxes" painted some nice, unobtrusive color (maybe white for minimum solar insolation and bolt a minimal antenna mast to it. If there aren't any roof penetrations or cables laying around, that relieves most of the angst about rooftop units.
I looked into JNOS earlier this year and was curious why it was not packaged for Debian. It seems that even though the source code is available gratis, the licensing hearkens back to such statements as "for amateur radio use only" which is incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. No one has apparently opted to package it and add it to the "non-free" repository.
I do know that the history of NOS goes back quite a ways. I'm not sure how much of its predecessor NET became a part of NOS. Back in the '90s I was able to make the acquaintance of Joe Buswell who held K5JB at that time who told me some of the history of NET but that I've sadly forgotten.
I cannot offer any insight to specific insight into your observation other than JNOS (and probably all of the NOS derivatives) predate the current open source / package / repository paradigm. The "free for Amateur Radio use only" restriction isn't unique to JNOS; I've seen similar language in a number of Amateur Radio software over the decades. I remember asking one author about that disclaimer and they cited that their software, intended only for use by fellow Amateur Radio Operators, ended up being used in commercial products. The original author would receive support requests from irate commercial users demanding a fix for a bug or wanting a new feature implemented (and, of course, the original author had not received any compensation for the commercial use).
Emergency communication: I look at the activities of our German society DARC and find large conceptional holes at the very base. This starts with ignoring the personal preparations like supplies for a few days to weeks for every family. Or: How should any alarm or coordination work when standard communication means have broken down? Remember that this is no topic only within the ham radio community: Emergency authorities must be able to easily contact the ham radio groups in a standard way. The central ham radio organization must be able to alarm their people etc. For this for example a JS8Call infrastructure could be helpful: The authorities contact one of two or three hams that had been named before. Those hams get a JS8Call TRX that interfaces with their smart phone. The JS8Call TRX has an alarm buzzer and is battery powered. Group calls could be used to alarm people. Point-to-point contacts can be used to request contacts with more conventional ham radio means. In their stand-by mode these transceivers could be operated with a minimum of power and a very basic antenna. Consider a form factor like a portable radio.
Alexander - Interesting you should mention notification / message distribution. That is indeed an issue. The "lost technology" of paging still has some utility (it's still used in the US by medical professionals because it works nearly 100% of the time, where mobile telephone texting does not (at least from commercial carriers with sites external to the hospital). There is a project called Distributed Amateur Paging Network (DAPNET) - https://hampager.de/#/ that I haven't dived very deeply into, but that may have some promise for "notification", especially now that we have very inexpensive compute / radio receive technology. It seems to me that we could easily replicate an alphanumeric pager with a small software defined receiver and perhaps a computer as simple as a microcontroller.
I read the letter N2AA wrote and that you posted just now, and I saw a few days ago that Ria had stepped down. I wasn't sure why, and to be honest I still haven't investigated it, but I'll give you my take on the ARRL and some of its motives.
Their standpoint on "radio active hams" seems to be predicated on whether or not they are ARRL members, by using the math that most active hams are members of the ARRL. How could the ARRL determine how many "radio active hams" there really are? This is a non-starter for me, and I can see where this is going. This is about memberships and money. Because it seems to me, what David is really saying is, 'We helped make licensing easier, to obtain more licenses/memberships, but they get their license and we never hear from them again; evidenced by the number of licenses having increased, but the number of ARRL memberships hasn't increased along with them.' He's disguising his language "active" = member.
I've been a member since getting my license a few years ago, but I only donate for the advocacy of spectrum and the magazine. The ARRL is akin to the NRA and other lobbyist groups and organizations. Most importantly, the ARRL is a business, and makes decisions based on what businesses are about. Money. This idea that DEI is some path to more money is a disillusion that seems to be sweeping across the corporate landscape. "Go woke, go broke" is a common catchphrase that has some merit. The fact is, manipulating somethings natural course to effect the outcome leads to unintended consequences. The matter of diversity in ham radio is a complex system, just as the diversity issue in general. As a matter of course, the "problem" would eventually self-correct, as it's been doing for decades, and getting in there and turning knobs and pushing buttons isn't going to help.
Old white men making up the majority of ham radio is not a problem that needs fixed, and is not a result of some mechanism of oppression. As I see it, there is complete freedom and inclusion in who can obtain a license, and the rest is up to them. Yes, it would appear that there are "gatekeepers" that think they're the true essence of ham radio. But these folks need to be ignored, and for the most part they are. I've had to deal with them starting out, but I quickly realized that I need not worry about their opinions. It's not a fraternity, a guild, or a club. No one is hand-picked and there is no interview process. We're free to do what we want after getting licensed, with in the law of course.
To sum it up, the ARRL is looking for ways to pull people in, not for amateur radio's sake, but for their own. Looking to project inclusiveness as a rallying cry is the wrong route in my opinion. It's not genuine and it shows. They need to slow their roll when it comes to their outreach efforts and focus on lobbying. They continue to interject themselves into matters they have no business getting into and it's having a negative effect on the hobby. Just my opinion.
James - I agree that the ARRL's characterization of ARRL members as "active" is at best... incomplete. Many inactive Amateur Radio Operators I've met maintain their ARRL membership to support Amateur Radio and receive QST, while many ACTIVE Amateur Radio Operators I've met choose not to be ARRL members because they don't see any direct benefit to them or they don't feel that the ARRL is actually effective in its stated mission to promote and protect Amateur Radio. The $50 / year "membership dues" plays a role in choosing not be a member of ARRL also.
You said:
Old white men making up the majority of ham radio is not a problem that needs fixed...
I disagree - the lack of diversity in Amateur Radio IS a problem that definitely DOES need to be fixed... IF we want Amateur Radio, especially its spectrum allocations, to continue into the future. The "old white men" will soon die out (as we agree... they're OLD), and there simply isn't Amateur Radio if there aren't any (or very few) Amateur Radio OPERATORS (remaining).
To attract today's youth to become involved in Amateur Radio, it's my observation that today's youth value diversity and if they don't see diversity reflected in an activity or organization, they often choose not to participate in that activity or organization.
You said:
... and is not a result of some mechanism of oppression.
I agree that the current lack of diversity in Amateur Radio is not a result of "some mechanism of oppression" - it's simply a historic demographic.
We in Amateur Radio can DO something about that current lack of diversity - we can all ENCOURAGE youth... ALL youth, to check out Amateur Radio and perhaps see themselves involved in it.
Great job as usual, and thank you for the recommendation! In addition to the thoughtful, opposite-of-social-media format of Substack, I think one of its greatest features are the network effects. It reminds me a bit of the old blogroll days. I hope that we can get more hams both writing and commenting here, so that we can better leverage that network effect.
Thanks for the link the RFBitBanger. I had not heard of it yet. I'll be watching that one for sure. It's now the SDR era in amateur radio, for good reason, but I think that classic analog RF design should never truly go away. That's the big impetus for Project Yamhill. Well, that plus the new solar cycle. :)
Jason - As I've said in Zero Retries, I don't quite understand some of (or the quantity...) of the many, many "itches" that are driving the wide diversity of design of SO many low-power HF radios, but I do admire the varying technical approaches. Your Project Yamhill is a unique approach for (as I understand it) a very modular, building block approach to building (and understanding) the various stages of a low-power HF radio. The RFBitBanger is another unique technical approach by trying to minimize the complexity of the individual components as well as minimize the overall design and construction complexity with the goal of maximizing the possibility that the RFBitBanger CAN be reproduced from components that will hopefully remain widely available.
One of my favorite examples of a unique approach to a low-power HF radio is the PrepComm DMX-40 Morse Code Transceiver - https://www.preppcomm.com/products/dmx-40-transceiver. The radio does all of the Morse Code (CW) work for you - just tune, type, and read the traffic.
Amateur Radio is such a big, interesting hobby with endless technological innovation occuring constantly. Thanks for contributing to the technological innovation with Project Yamhill and YOUR newsletter!
Over here we also have a DAPNET implementation, often combined with HAMNET, our portion of 44net. See https://hamnetdb.net. My mentioning of JS8Call stems from the fact that JS8Call uses shortwave and our pagers work in the 70cm band. My combination of JS8Call and smartphone has other possibilities like "silent alarms": The national emergency control center of DARC could send repeated group calls to all participants that then reply via WLAN and the internet connection of the respective ham. If this answer does not come, the ham could be informed about the problem. As long as only JS8Call is involved, no outdoor antenna should be needed.
Alexander - You make a very good point about the complementary nature of paging (DAPNET) on VHF / UHF and JS8Call on HF. I was aware of the robust, low transmit power capability, but as you point out, it's robust enough to implement with an indoor antenna.
Steve,
Like I alluded to before, these issues will resolve themselves without intervention. We all value diversity and it's not just a novel youth movement. Youth are not shying away from amateur radio because of DEI or the lack thereof. If you have solid evidence of this, I'd be open to see it here. Perhaps you can present it in Zero Retries. I'm not challenging you, as I do see the future is bleak for amateur radio if there isn't a change in outreach. But the discussion needs to be based in true reality. Amateur radio is pretty big and growing in developing countries such as India and China, and I don't they're concerned with diversity nearly as much as we are, but granted, they're a more homogeneous society.
The bottom-line is that amateur radio is dying in the western world because the youth see no value in it. Unless that changes, we'll have what we have. Cell phones and internet service everywhere we go isn't doing amateur radio any favors. There's also so many more distractions in day-to-day life, kids aren't going to take the time. That's the crux of the issue, in my opinion, not a lack of diversity. The diversity thing is far too overused and seems to be a hot topic. Like a panic button that is presented, but one that doesn't really do anything besides provide temporary relief. CRT has infiltrated our minds and institutions of all kinds to look for oppression at every turn. Even where it isn't.
In short, we need to focus on the real reasons that folks (not just the youth) aren't drawn to learn and use ham radio. It's an honest discussion and it's important that we continue having it for the sake of our passion and arguably for the sake of our overall safety. I could make an argument for EmComm as being the savior of ham radio as things escalate into chaos more and more each day. Presenting radio as a means of free speech has a solid argument as well and should be on the table.
James - I'll let you have the last word in our discussion on this topic. Reasonable people can agree to disagree.
In middle of Manhattan, I've had to adapt to living on a low floor with a high noise floor--especially after building management dismantled my HF and VHF antennas. One way is with LoRa devices, e.g., https://github.com/flengyel/RYLR998-LoRa in the 33cm ISM/ham band. LoRa, as everyone subscribed likely knows, is suitable for long-range, low-power, low-bandwidth communications below the noise floor and is used in off-grid communication and remote sensing. As for operating in the Upper West Side during one of the all-encompassing disasters you mention, my plan is to slump forward in my chair. de WM2D.
F - Low rise dwelling, in Manhattan... that sounds like the definition of human-made radio frequency noise pollution! I think that LoRa and especially mesh systems like Austin Mesh https://austinmesh.org/ have a lot of promise. My vision for Amateur Radio includes people who have the ability to host "multiport" systems and share their resources so that you can come connect on one one system - for you, LoRa Mesh on 33 cm (902 - 928 MHz) and out on another port such as, say Winlink on HF. Another "mitigation" I imagine for near-future Amateur Radio is that now that solar panels have reasonable power output and small sizes, and batteries are compact and powerful, it's possible to locate remote nodes with no power or wired connectivity. Perhaps a rooftop on a friend's building where they have a tiny bit of "colo" space? I saw one interesting hack where they parked a vehicle on the top deck of a parking garage, put a flexible solar panel on the dashboard, and had a battery and a low-powered digipeater in the back seat. Perhaps think of your situation as a stimulus for innovation in constrained Amateur Radio Operations :-)
"Perhaps think of your situation as a stimulus for innovation in constrained Amateur Radio Operations :-)"
That is exactly how I see my situation. The proliferation of open-source ham radio software, the availability of cheap hardware (e.g., the REYAX RYLR998 is $14 on Amazon), affordable consumer 3D printing, etc., presents numerous opportunities for development and experimentation in amateur radio--with a little research. I look forward to implementing such multiport systems, hand-held LoRa text communicators and off-grid radios in the future. I hope to get my hands on a REYAX RYLR993_Lite LoRaWan module, which is compatible with the 998. My next project is to check whether a fully functional GNU Radio software-defined radio (SDR) implementation of a LoRa transceiver is compatible with the RYLR998 (see https://github.com/tapparelj/gr-lora_sdr and https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.08208). I also plan to try out a flat panel RFID ISM band antenna--these can provide 8-9db gain and can handle up to 15 W--I'm running 22dbm max input with these modules. As for a friend's roof--assuming I had any friends--the amateur radio club at WABC a couple blocks away had colo space in a building with roof antennas over 500 feet up--it's another world at that height. I think the club is close to dissolution, unfortunately
F - That is a fascinating suite of projects you have lined up! One of the things that has changed over the past few years regarding systems mounted on rooftops that, with careful design, they can be self-sufficient with solar panels and good batteries. I can imagine one of those big steel "job boxes" painted some nice, unobtrusive color (maybe white for minimum solar insolation and bolt a minimal antenna mast to it. If there aren't any roof penetrations or cables laying around, that relieves most of the angst about rooftop units.
I looked into JNOS earlier this year and was curious why it was not packaged for Debian. It seems that even though the source code is available gratis, the licensing hearkens back to such statements as "for amateur radio use only" which is incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. No one has apparently opted to package it and add it to the "non-free" repository.
I do know that the history of NOS goes back quite a ways. I'm not sure how much of its predecessor NET became a part of NOS. Back in the '90s I was able to make the acquaintance of Joe Buswell who held K5JB at that time who told me some of the history of NET but that I've sadly forgotten.
I cannot offer any insight to specific insight into your observation other than JNOS (and probably all of the NOS derivatives) predate the current open source / package / repository paradigm. The "free for Amateur Radio use only" restriction isn't unique to JNOS; I've seen similar language in a number of Amateur Radio software over the decades. I remember asking one author about that disclaimer and they cited that their software, intended only for use by fellow Amateur Radio Operators, ended up being used in commercial products. The original author would receive support requests from irate commercial users demanding a fix for a bug or wanting a new feature implemented (and, of course, the original author had not received any compensation for the commercial use).