From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Matt Mackall Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] Experimental Driver for Neterion/S2io 10GbE Adapters Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:59:34 -0800 Message-ID: <20050315055934.GJ3163@waste.org> References: <200503142023.j2EKNMDD027705@guinness.s2io.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: "" , "" , "" , "'Jeff Garzik'" To: Scott Feldman Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 09:14:59PM -0800, Scott Feldman wrote: > > On Mar 14, 2005, at 12:22 PM, Alex Aizman wrote: > > >HAL-based > >========= > >Most Neterion drivers are HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) based. This > >is > >always a curse and blessing; in our experience this was the latter by > >a big > >margin. While the current "s2io" driver in the kernel doesn't share > >HAL code > >with other driver, the "xge" driver is HAL-based. > > e1000 and ixgb are HAL-based, which is why there is always push back > when someone in the community modifies *_hw.[ch]. I'd hate to see more > of this in the kernel, but I can definitely relate to the "testing > across multiple OSes" gain. > > Here's an (old?) idea: remember the NDIS-wrapper project? I think the > reverse is much more interesting. A linux-wrapper takes a plain old > Linux driver and wraps it with what ever is needed to make it an NDIS > driver. Or FreeBSD, or whatever. Let's pretend this is trivial for a > second. What do we gain? 1) one clean Linux driver to maintain, 2) > testability on other OSes, and 3) access to other OSes' certification > kits. Licensing is clean: the Linux driver is GPL and the > linux-wrapper code is GPL. Can't the world revolve around Linux and > let everyone else be burdened with the abstraction layer overhead? Depends. Vendors of non-GPL OSes can't ship such drivers for risk of their product becoming a derived work to the extent they're relying on such drivers to make their system useful. You can't get around the GPL by putting a GPL wrapper with an exception around something. -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.