make kernel driver closed

[Jeff Haran]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu]
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2014 10:15 AM
> To: Jeff Haran
> Cc: Alexandru Juncu; Richard Weinberger; phani kumar; kernelnewbies
> Subject: Re: make kernel driver closed
> 
> On Mon, 27 Jan 2014 17:19:46 +0000, Jeff Haran said:
> 
> > There are lots of companies with closed source Linux drivers. My former
> > employer Brocade Communications Systems wrote, maintained and shipped their
> > Fiberchannel stack Linux drivers consisting of tens of thousands of lines of
> > closed source code for years and though I am no longer with that company to my
> > knowledge they continue to do so today
> 
> They appear to be in full compliance with the GPL:
> 
> http://www.brocade.com/services-support/drivers-downloads/oscd/FabricOS510.page
> 
> Note that there's nothing that prohibits a company from shipping a product
> that has an open Linux kernel, and the "tens of thousands of lines of
> closed source code" is all in userspace.
> 
> So unless you have actual proof that the Brocade switches have *kernel* code
> that hasn't been offered to the users, they're not (as far as I can tell)
> doing anything illegal.

I worked there for 8 years. That web page lists open source packages that they use as part of their Fabos product, not the stuff they've developed internally.

Get on a Brocade FC switch, login as root and run lsmod. There are plenty of Fibrechannel modules that will show up that are not listed on that page or anywhere else that is publically available.

It's no secret. Keeping all the Brocade kernel code running is a huge endeavor. I would guess that at this point hundreds of engineers have worked on it over the years.