Will the next generation police scanner be open sourced?

While we play cat and mouse with the Phantom Pro668 firmware update, could an open source scanner be the next big thing?

First of all, I am not a hardware guy (although I am not afraid of a soldering iron), and I am not certainly a programmer. I do however have a pretty good understanding on how things work.

While putting together a BCD396 size scanner is probably out of the question, a home patrol size scanner may just be feasible.  Now that 3d printers are accessible to just about anyone, we  have the ability to create some awesome things.

Now for the parts.  Starting out with processing, the Raspberry Pi (2nd gen) seems like a good choice.  Small and powerful.  Drop a 128 gig SD card in there and you have plenty of space for recording.  There are already small touch screens made for the pi.  One of those with a nice 3d printed case could make a nice size radio.  Unlike the home patrol, it could be made to to sit horizontal or vertical.  The only thing I am not sure about is the battery.   I don't know how long 4 AA batteries would power this.  Another option would be a smartphone lithium battery or even an option to run either one.

The existing sdr dongles could be used, however ideally, one could be manufactured with a smaller footprint, with the antenna easily wired to an external bnc connector.   I would engineer it with 2 dongles for optimal trunk tracking or dual receive.  Taking the dongles one step farther, I would like to see some optimized for say VHF to 900mhz, and maybe one optimized for short wave.  We could actually create a wide coverage receiver with very good sensitivity.

Finally the software and operating system.  Sdr sharp although works, is not the easiest thing to use.  A user friendly version of that with loadable modules is what I envision.   Load up only the modules you need (dmr, provoice etc).  Some sort of slimmed down Linux would be the OS of choice.

Finally, with the built in ethernet adapter,  you have a scanner ready to stream, or run twotonedetect.  In reality,  if you need a streaming scanner only, build it without a screen and manage it remotely.

These are just some basic ideas off the top of my head.  The possibilities are endless for a project like this.  Something like this may someday be a real home brew or kickstarter project.