free tg3 ethernet driver

free tg3 ethernet driver

[Davi Leal]

We would like to have a tg3 driver which would be accepted as free by the 
FSF's standards.

At least some part of the driver seems to be GPL'ed; see [1].  However, the 
FSF's hardware guide lists tg3 as non-free, so there seems to be a non-free 
firmware somewhere.

 [1]
 http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/driver-sla.php?driver=570x-Linux


We would like to be able to use the free driver with Linux 2.6.27 or later.

Donation pledge group at
  http://gnuherds.org/pledges?id=58
Current donations: $101 USD

Re: free tg3 ethernet driver

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 8 Oct 2008 23:53:30 +0200
Davi Leal <davi@leals.com> wrote:

> We would like to have a tg3 driver which would be accepted as free by the 
> FSF's standards.

Well if you want to write new firmware for the device you'll need to
reverse engineer the chip internals or convince Broadcom to document them
for you. I suspect you'll have to get to the point of xraying the
component slice by slice and need a multi-million dollar budget.

Alan

Re: free tg3 ethernet driver

[Davi Leal]

Alan Cox wrote:
> Well if you want to write new firmware for the device you'll need to
> reverse engineer the chip internals or convince Broadcom to document them
> for you. I suspect you'll have to get to the point of xraying the
> component slice by slice and need a multi-million dollar budget.

People position seem to be continue to pledge to pay $151 to the developer(s) 
(even if it's Broadcom in case they apply to the pledge system) who provide a 
free driver for tg3 devices.

Re: free tg3 ethernet driver

[Alan Cox]

On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 22:36:57 +0200
Davi Leal <davi@leals.com> wrote:

> Alan Cox wrote:
> > Well if you want to write new firmware for the device you'll need to
> > reverse engineer the chip internals or convince Broadcom to document them
> > for you. I suspect you'll have to get to the point of xraying the
> > component slice by slice and need a multi-million dollar budget.
> 
> People position seem to be continue to pledge to pay $151 to the developer(s) 
> (even if it's Broadcom in case they apply to the pledge system) who provide a 
> free driver for tg3 devices.

Well thats good, another 1.999849 million dollars and you might get
started.

With the best will in the world if you go and pay Broadcom zillions to
open source the firmware the only incentive you create is for them to
keep future firmware proprietary to sell to you next time around.

If on the other hand you buy non Broadcom equipment if you feel this
way about the firmware then you create a far better economic incentive,
and at $10 a NIC its not really hard to do that.

Alan

Re: free tg3 ethernet driver

[Willy Tarreau]

On Thu, Oct 09, 2008 at 10:51:43PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 22:36:57 +0200
> Davi Leal <davi@leals.com> wrote:
> 
> > Alan Cox wrote:
> > > Well if you want to write new firmware for the device you'll need to
> > > reverse engineer the chip internals or convince Broadcom to document them
> > > for you. I suspect you'll have to get to the point of xraying the
> > > component slice by slice and need a multi-million dollar budget.
> > 
> > People position seem to be continue to pledge to pay $151 to the developer(s) 
> > (even if it's Broadcom in case they apply to the pledge system) who provide a 
> > free driver for tg3 devices.
> 
> Well thats good, another 1.999849 million dollars and you might get
> started.
> 
> With the best will in the world if you go and pay Broadcom zillions to
> open source the firmware the only incentive you create is for them to
> keep future firmware proprietary to sell to you next time around.

Very true. If I start cooking awful cakes and I see people come to pay
me for throwing them away, I'll sure restart ASAP.

> If on the other hand you buy non Broadcom equipment if you feel this
> way about the firmware then you create a far better economic incentive,
> and at $10 a NIC its not really hard to do that.

And that's not counting with the fact that their crappy BNX2 has been
showing horrible performance for several years now on servers, dropping
frames like mad, and reminding the poor reliability and performance of
Dlink's DL2000...

Willy

Re: free tg3 ethernet driver

[Davi Leal]

Alan Cox wrote:
> Well thats good, another 1.999849 million dollars and you might get
> started.
>
> With the best will in the world if you go and pay Broadcom zillions to
> open source the firmware the only incentive you create is for them to
> keep future firmware proprietary to sell to you next time around.
>
> If on the other hand you buy non Broadcom equipment if you feel this
> way about the firmware then you create a far better economic incentive,
> and at $10 a NIC its not really hard to do that.
 
We have added your new comments in the pledge description.

 http://gnuherds.org/pledges?id=58

Re: free tg3 ethernet driver

[Chris Snook]

Davi Leal wrote:
> We would like to have a tg3 driver which would be accepted as free by the 
> FSF's standards.

I would like a pony.

> At least some part of the driver seems to be GPL'ed; see [1].  However, the 
> FSF's hardware guide lists tg3 as non-free, so there seems to be a non-free 
> firmware somewhere.
> 
>  [1]
>  http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/driver-sla.php?driver=570x-Linux

Firmware blobs aren't news.  They've been discussed at great length on 
this list.  If you want to whine about this, whine to Broadcom.

> We would like to be able to use the free driver with Linux 2.6.27 or later.

You must be new here.

> Donation pledge group at
>   http://gnuherds.org/pledges?id=58
> Current donations: $101 USD

Gigabit NICs with firmware-free drivers cost $10.  If you care that much 
about the binary blob in tg3, maybe you should stop giving your money to 
Broadcom, and start giving it to vendors whose drivers satisfy your 
requirements.

-- Chris