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

["Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 16, 2006 at 08:14:52PM +0100, Michael Paesold wrote:
> Andrew D. Ball wrote:
> >That would be sad, but is possible.  Just like I don't believe Linux
> >drivers should be allowed to be non-GPL, not allowing drivers for
> >Windows to be GPL makes sense, unless the kernel is organized with much
> >more isolation as more of a microkernel.
> >
> >Anyone's more informed thoughts on this would be appreciated.
> >
> >Peace.
> >Andrew
> >
> >On Wed, 2006-11-15 at 07:46 -0700, Ky Srinivasan wrote:
> >>I may be wrong here; but I think windows drivers cannot be open-sourced. 
> >>I recall reading that in windows DDK documentation.
> 
> I don't believe the problem is with Windows drivers, but with the Windows 
> Driver Development Kit. The DDK has a license incompatible with the GPL. I 
> think writing a driver without the kit would still be possible, although 
> difficult because it would require much more knowledge about the Windows 
> kernel.

Just do a chinese wall, clean room implementation then. One person has the
DDK and writes a spec for the driver. The second writes the actual driver
based on the spec - never looking at the DDK directly. A little more work
sure, but certainly doable.

Regards,
Dan.
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