[ogb-discuss] Project proposal - Integration (MFI driver for LSI network chipsets)

[Alan DuBoff]

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007, James C. McPherson wrote:

> What we have with mfi is the situation where LSI's "oh we're really
> truly going to give you this source real soon now" has taken, more
> than 12 months (as far as I'm aware).
>
> How can *any* organisation think that this is useful to the people
> who purchase their kit?

James,

I'll eply to your message, there's a bunch of them to wade through in this 
thread, but you were the one that derived this as you are somehow related 
to submitting some type of ARC case for the author.

I did find out about the megasas driver, and it's license.

I also asked my manager if he would reply to this thread, but I think it 
is remotely possible that he will, I will pass along what I found out from 
him.

Just before Xmas the agreement was received, signed by LSI to get the 
driver putback, and this was about the time this thread started.

The LSI driver is open source, I do not know exactly what license it is 
under, but the driver portion is all distributable source. There are some 
pieces that are not open, but those are the management utilities, and it 
is up to Sun/LSI in how those are made available to the community. Since 
LSI is the maintainer of those sources, they will most likely have the 
biggest say, but I am not clear on how the roles are defined, or who did 
the actual work. It is done under contract/nda between Sun/LSI, even 
though the driver is being open sourced.

You will see this putback within the next month I'm told, as of just 
before Xmas, it is final.

> Whatever distros are out there will *all* have to deal with the
> concept and problem of handling changes which move from one driver
> to another, and how to make that happen in as pain-free a fashion
> as possible.

I wonder how that will work for more than one of the same driver in open 
source? It should be able to handle more than one driver to support a 
given device also, and the user should be able to select which one they 
use. Or it should be handled by specific distributions in which drivers 
they package for a given device, and a distribution could elect to devise 
a system that would allow for more than one driver for the same device I 
'spose. That would give the user an alternative driver, in this case the 
mfi could be offered along with he megasas driver.

--

Alan DuBoff - Solaris x86 IHV/OEM Group