Re: [dpdk-dev] Napatech pmd

[Neil Horman <nhorman@tuxdriver.com>]

On Mon, Jan 08, 2018 at 04:15:47PM +0100, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 08/01/2018 14:08, Finn Christensen:
> > Hi Thomas,
> > 
> > Thanks for bringing this discussion up again.
> > 
> > The Napatech PMD is build on top of our proprietary driver. The reason is basically that we utilize many years of driver development and thus reuses the FPGA controlling code in the DPDK PMD. The Napatech driver suite is still closed source.
> > The current NTNIC PMD dynamically links a Napatech proprietary NTAPI library to control the FPGA on our NICs.
> > 
> > We did think of the PMD as being our responsibility to keep updated towards the Napatech NIC communication, and that we would be engaged and asked to modify accordingly if changes in DPDK required that (maintainer). Furthermore, the PMD compiles with no issues, when NTNIC is enabled.
> > We have plans to write a stand-alone PMD, but this is not a small task to do, therefore we haven't got to that yet.
> 
> This standalone PMD would be open and BSD licensed?
> 
> > If the DPDK community would accept the dynamic linking to a proprietary library, from inside our PMD, then it would be great.
> 
> Dynamic linking is OK.
> I think we can accept such PMD at the condition that we can build it,
> meaning we can easily download the build dependencies for free.
> 
> > Let me know what you think. Or maybe you have ideas to what else we could do to make it upstream.
> 
> My thinking is to allow every hardware to have a good DPDK support.
> Every step in this direction is a progress.
> 

I have to ask the question:  Why not open source your FPGA code?  That would
make all of this a non issue.

While I knows it to various degrees been done in the past, I really don't like
the idea of including drivers (even open source drivers), if they have
dependencies on closed source software.  It means that we as a community assume
some level of responsibility for that pmd, but have no ability to make fixes to
that pmd without accepting your license terms.  I understand that you are saying
you currently have responsibility for it as the license owner, but if that
chages in the future, the PMD has no use to the community.  It would be
preferable if access to controlling the hardware was just free of a proprietary
license.  Then you wouldn't have to write a stand alone pmd.

Neil