Publish out of tree drivers with GPL #7

New Issue

bradydibble · 2024-08-20T05:03:59Z

bradydibble commented

2024-08-20 05:03:59 +00:00

Will the RESF board support publishing Out of Tree (OOT) drivers if they include a GPL license?

SIG/Cloud has a request from a stakeholder at Google to incorporate Out of Tree drivers (IDPF, RDMA) into the SIG/Cloud offering. These drivers come with GNU license files (General Public License (GPL) Version 2 or BSD 2-Clause). The drivers are not currently available at a publicly accessible link.

Will the RESF board support publishing Out of Tree (OOT) drivers if they include a GPL license? SIG/Cloud has a request from a stakeholder at Google to incorporate Out of Tree drivers (IDPF, RDMA) into the SIG/Cloud offering. These drivers come with GNU license files (General Public License (GPL) Version 2 or BSD 2-Clause). The drivers are not currently available at a publicly accessible link.

label commented

2024-08-20 06:07:42 +00:00

Although the Linux kernel is provided to the public under GPLv2, I am inclined to say that the RESF board and legal counsel may want to take a look at it to double check as it's not publicly published yet.

If the code isn't public but the OOT driver code comes with the GPLv2 license, it might be ok (assuming the author(s) do publish it at some point), but I still believe that both (RESF+legal) should look into it and provide their comments on the matter.

Perhaps others on the project board here will have other thoughts (as some of us are both on the project and RESF board).

Although the Linux kernel is provided to the public under GPLv2, I am inclined to say that the RESF board and legal counsel may want to take a look at it to double check as it's not publicly published yet. If the code isn't public but the OOT driver code comes with the GPLv2 license, it *might* be ok (assuming the author(s) do publish it at some point), but I still believe that both (RESF+legal) should look into it and provide their comments on the matter. Perhaps others on the project board here will have other thoughts (as some of us are both on the project and RESF board).

bradydibble commented

2024-08-20 15:12:40 +00:00

Thank you @label. I am attaching the files for reference.

idpf_0.0.636.tar.gz

966 KiB

bradydibble commented

2024-08-20 15:12:53 +00:00

No description provided.

rdma_0.1.tar.gz

2.6 MiB

bradydibble commented

2024-08-30 15:15:47 +00:00

Intel has begun publishing their IDPF drivers on Github. https://github.com/intel/ethernet-linux-idpf

More work will be required for them to unify and publish the RDMA driver sources.

While this is indicative of their commitment to publishing these drivers, we are still seeking to publish early OOT drivers through SIG/Cloud in advance of the specific versions being published in the respective public repo.

Intel has begun publishing their IDPF drivers on Github. https://github.com/intel/ethernet-linux-idpf More work will be required for them to unify and publish the RDMA driver sources. While this is indicative of their commitment to publishing these drivers, we are still seeking to publish early OOT drivers through SIG/Cloud in advance of the specific versions being published in the respective public repo.

mustafa commented

2024-09-01 15:08:32 +00:00

As long as the vendor allows publishing, and that the code is openly licensed, there shouldn't be a restriction on what SIG/Cloud wants to host. I don't think a longer investigation is needed now that the vendor themselves have started periodically syncing it to Github