RFC: Capability addition for IEEE 1588

[Jack Vogel]

On 10/3/07, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> In message <2a41acea0710031306p22d66379oc6575ad9ff5ea99d at mail.gmail.com>, "Jack Vogel" writes
> :
>
> >> When I talked to HP's licensing department, there were a $1k licensefee
> >> for anything IEEE1588 related and their message was that even if
> >> the FreeBSD foundation got such a license, the users would still
> >> have to have one as well if they compiled the source code or some
> >> such nonsense.
> >
> >What source code was being talked about? I'm not talking about
> >anything userland, and my driver is just turning on a hardware
> >feature, I can't imagine HP having anything to do with it, but I
> >double check internally.
>
> They seem to think they have a patent on doing things that way,
> no matter what hardware or software you use.
>
> If Intel chips have hw-support for timestamping, somebody at intel
> must have thought about the patent thing.
>
> But as I said, if that can be resolved, it should certainly go in.

This is a feature that will be coming, its not in any hardware you
can buy today, presumeably Intel dealt with the patent thing, but
I have already sent internal email checking on the whole matter.

I'll followup when I'm things are clarified.

Jack