In a move that will undoubtedly increase its street cred among technophiles and tinkerers alike, Atheros announced that it's releasing the specs to allow open source drivers for its ATH5K and ATH9K chip families. The move comes after Atheros first released some open source drivers for newer 802.11n chipsets and now the company is finally opening up its HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to developers, even using Linux as the reference public code base. No word on when any of this stuff will be released, but rest assured, we'll be on the lookout for more info -- we're sure the hackers out there are champing at the bit.Filed under: Wireless, NetworkingAtheros lets open source devs in on the WiFi party originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read