RE: [Xen-devel] Is anyone working on HVM Paravirt drivers for windows?

["Vessey, Bruce A" <Bruce.Vessey@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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

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