GPL issues around OFED code in FreeBSD 9.1

[Jeff Meegan]

According to their EULA, it is BSD licensed.

http://www.mellanox.com/page/mlnx_ofed_eula?mtag=linux_sw_drivers <http://www.mellanox.com/page/mlnx_ofed_eula?mtag=linux_sw_drivers>

—j

> On Sep 3, 2015, at 1:07 PM, Jack Vogel <jfvogel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We (meaning Intel when I was still there) raised this issue with George a
> long time ago, I'm not sure
> what the resolution was.
> 
> If Mellanox is the owner then they should have released the code somewhere
> without any
> GPL license in it, as Intel does with code they multi-license.
> 
> Jack
> 
> 
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 12:07 PM, K. Macy <kmacy at freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
>> 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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