It would be nice if somebody releases HVM paravirt drivers for Windows as open
source, but I'm not holding my breath. Why? Because of the Microsoft DDK
license. There's no requirement that a Windows device driver developer use the
Microsoft DDK, but in my experience most do. The typical methodology for a
Windows driver developer is to take the sample code from the DDK as a starting
point, and build the driver from there. But the DDK has some interesting
licensing restrictions that, to me, don't look compatible with open source.
The Microsoft DDK license is available at
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/ddk/ServerSP1DDKEULA.mspx Sections 3 &
4 look particularly problematic.
Maybe somebody out there is developing (or has developed) Windows drivers
without any encumbrances from the Windows DDK. I think that's the only way
we'll see open source Windows drivers.
- Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ben Thomas
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 2:07 PM
To: Daniel P. Berrange
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Dave Cameron
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Is anyone working on HVM Paravirt drivers for windows?
Hi,
Our current PV on HVM drivers are based upon work that was submitted to
xen-devel back in April. As you might recall, our focus has been concurrent
support of 32 and 64 bit fully virtualized domains, and all of our work
supports this. I'm sure that the concepts of what we've done, and what was
placed into the open source project starting in July, are quite similar.
However, given the time frames involved, and the base work not being included
back in April, I also have no doubts that the interfaces aren't identical.
As noted, we have these drivers running and performing extremely well at our
beta customers. We support concurrent usage for both 32 and
64 bit user domains. The Linux code was released a short while back, and is
open source and available for download on our website.
The Windows drivers were completely developed in-house, and there are currently
internal discussions about whether or not we will release them as open source.
-b
Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> Are they compatible with the current xen-unstable or 3.0.3 releases,
> or do they have a dependnacy on the other hypervisor changes in the
> VirtualIron codepath posted a few weeks back ?
>
> Regards,
> Dan.
>
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2006 at 07:37:36AM -0400, Ben Thomas wrote:
>
>>Yes; we have.
>>
>>On 10/27/06, Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>OK.
>>>
>>>How about people from XenSource, VirtualIron, Intel, IBM, Fujitsu..
>>>are you writing windows PV drivers?
>>>
>>>-- Pasi
>>>
>>>
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Thomas Virtual Iron Software
bthomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tower 1, Floor 2
978-849-1214 900 Chelmsford Street
Lowell, MA 01851
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
|
Home