Re: [Xen-devel] Re: [XCP] new version available

[Tom Rotenberg <tom.rotenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

So, the community has currently 2 sets of drivers:
* The GPL PV drivers, which are less stable, and not as good as the
XCP PV drivers (not signed by MS$, etc), but are open, and everyone
can change them fix their bugs, support extra-stuff, etc.
* The XCP PV drivers, which looks stable, and better, but are
closed-source, and u can't fix bugs there, change them for your own
use, etc.

1. Is it a good idea, to have the XCP PV drivers closed-source? If u
will open-source the XCP drivers, or at-least contribute some of their
code (which isn't blocked by MS$ stuff) to the GPL-PV, the community
will have one strong and stable PV drivers tree. It will be good for
Xen, as other companies, like Red-Hat (KVM) already released the full
source of their Windows PV drivers.

2. What is the planned policy about the XCP PV drivers?

Tom

2010/1/21 Ian Pratt <Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> > > That's cool! Is there some comparison with GPLPV drivers in case of
>> > > stability, speed, features and so on?
>> > > It looks a bit like future competition between the two driver packs?
>> >
>> > Well the major difference is that GPLPV drivers are opensource,
>> > and the Citrix Windows PV drivers provided in XCP are not.
>>
>> Ah, I see - too bad Citrix couldn't open source them :)
>
> They're freely distributable in binary form, but they link against various 
> MSFT libraries which have licenses that restrict what can be done with the 
> source. The binaries pass all the MSFT class-specific WHQL tests and are 
> signed so you don't get annoying pop-ups when installing them.
>
> I'm not aware of any relative benchmarking having been done, but it would 
> certainly be  interesting to know.
>
> Ian
>
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