Quote Originally Posted by ChrisS View Post
that they also do something about older chipsets from the rt2500 family.

I've (still) got two of them, one pci2500 and one usb2500. The pci wireless card did never work at all and still doesn't with even the most recent ubuntu kernels and the wireless signal strength for the usb card is just absurdly bad - if your computer is not sitting DIRECTLY next to your source, you do not get any signal at all. Leaving the room and the signal is gone.

I know the rt2500 chipsets are old, but compared to similar old ones from intel, dell and broadcom, I just can advice avoiding ralink chips if possible. Since I turned to Broadcom and Intel, the wireless is just as good as under windows.
I don't think a company would put resources in adapting old cards drivers to another infrastructure (which I think must be done to give the support in the open wifi driver), it is more probably that they just release the code of their original driver and some documentation, and then, hope that a hobbyist wants to give it support through the open wifi.