In this talk, Morgan, hardware and firmware developer at M17, is going to present a brief history of the digital modes in ham radio and place them on the spectrum of open source, underlining the main historical obstacles. Then, he will explain what allowed the emergence of the two main fully open source protocols. Taking M17 as an example he will describe the new possibilities brought on the table and presenting the whole ecosystem revolving around it, highlighting the relationships between all those open-source projects and how they reinforce each other.