GPL issues around OFED code in FreeBSD 9.1

[K. Macy]

On Sep 3, 2015 10:33 AM, "Vijay Singh" <vijju.singh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Someone told me that once the OFED code hit kernel.org the GPL is the only
> license that applies. Does anyone have insights about that?

That sounds bizarre since mellanox wrote the code and explicitly dual
licensed.

The problem you *do* run in to is code creep. The Linux internal interfaces
are almost certainly totally undocumented, so a clean room reimplementation
as they change or bugs get fixed - changing behaviors - is not possible.
Over time the tendency is to copy and paste from Linux to OFED or the shim
layer creating real ambiguity about provenance. In practice it's not so
much of a problem because Linus tends to adhere to an interpretation of the
GPLv2 that is not vendor unfriendly the way some of his lieutenants would
prefer (see Greg's efforts to call closed source drivers derived works).

Nonetheless, if you're paranoid an audit is in order.

Cheers.

>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 10:25 AM, Garrett Cooper <yaneurabeya at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > > On Aug 31, 2015, at 09:34, Hrishikesh Keremane via freebsd-hackers <
> > freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > [Sorry for cross posting]
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > We are working on a product(FreeBSD based) that would require RDMA
over
> > iWARP and are considering using the OFED stack in FreeBSD 9.1.
> > > We will be making some changes to the OFED stack to customize it to
our
> > requirements.
> > >
> > > The concern is regarding the implications of GPL licensing of OFED on
> > our code base.
> > > Has anyone worked with OFED in FreeBSD and/or is aware of the
licensing
> > issues around it?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance for your help.
> > >
> > > Please include me in your replies as I am not subscribed to these
lists.
> >
> > The OFED stack is BSD/GPLv2 dual licensed IIRC. the Mellanox import
might
> > have made it 100% BSD licensed though.
> >
> > There's FreeBSD-infiniband at freebsd.org as well. It's a low traffic list,
> > but it might hit a better target audience in the future.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -NGie
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