linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/5] misc: mlx5ctl: Add mlx5ctl misc driver

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Message-ID: <2023101902-upturned-pledge-3a35@gregkh>
Date:   Thu, 19 Oct 2023 21:46:29 +0200
From:   Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To:     Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@...dia.com>
Cc:     Saeed Mahameed <saeed@...nel.org>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Leon Romanovsky <leonro@...dia.com>,
        Jiri Pirko <jiri@...dia.com>,
        Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@...dia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/5] misc: mlx5ctl: Add mlx5ctl misc driver

On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 04:00:46PM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 19, 2023 at 07:21:57PM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > All of the Mellanox driver stack (over 400 files now!) is dual
> > > licensed because we have a large team of people working the Mellanox
> > > driver for many operating systems with many different licenses. We
> > > want the certainty of a permissive license for the driver code we
> > > supply to Linux as the team routinely references and/or re-uses
> > > Mellanox authored Linux driver code into other scenarios under the
> > > permissive side of the dual license.
> > > 
> > > For instance I could easily see the work Saeed has done here finding
> > > its way into FreeBSD. We significantly support FreeBSD employing
> > > maintainers and develop a sophisticated Mellanox driver over
> > > there. This would not be possible without the Linux driver being dual
> > > licensed.
> > 
> > Yes it would, you can take the work that you all do and license it under
> > the BSD license and put it into FreeBSD just fine.
> 
> Sure, you can do that at day 0, but mlx5 is now about 10 years old and
> has tens of thousands of commits. Many non-Mellanox commits. (mostly
> non-significant, IMHO, IANAL)

That's not the case for this specific chunk of code, so it's not a valid
point at all, sorry.

Let's stick to just this new file, please keep it one-license, not dual,
it makes everything simpler overall.

> Remember that Leon created auxiliary bus so these complex multi-system
> HWs could be split up cleanly into their respective subsystems? This
> is an aux device driver for the misc subsystem as part of the giant
> cross-subsystem mlx5 driver. Ie Saeed is adding 3 more files to that
> existing monster.

Yes, and as the auxiliary bus code is EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() attempting to
license code that is a driver for that bus (i.e. this new contribution)
under anything other than just GPL is crazy.  Go talk to your lawyers
about that please, it's obviously not ok.

thanks,

greg k-h