Re: [Ocf-linux-users] OCF inbuilt and 2.6.27

[Daniel M. <da...@da...>]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:41:12 +1000 David McCullough wrote:

> OCF is not moving into the kernel,  not ever.  The licensing was one
> of the major stumbing blocks.

I have just checked kernel 2.6.28.7 and I found (native) drivers for

- VIA's Padlock
- AMD's Geode AES engine
- Intel's IXP4xx NPE-C
- Freescale's Integrated Security Engine (talitos)
- HIFN 795x crypto accelerator

That's definitely more than two years ago.

I am now asking myself why not write native Linux drivers instead of
OCF modules and use the cryptodev (/dev/crypto) interface only? I have
read the OCF documentation and I know that David would like other OS
projects (e.g. OpenBSD or FreeBSD) to benefit from new/improved
drivers. I can hardly imagine that new drivers can be adopted without
porting efforts.

I myself would rather write a native driver and distribute it with
dual license (GPL/BSD). The only reason I didn't managed it yet was the
lack of documentation of Linux's async crypto API ;-)

A native driver could be used for
- kernel IPSec
- luks/dm-crypt
- ..

The cryptodev/cryptosoft interface is still needed for user space
applications such as OpenSSL. If those two parts where GPL licensed 
the acceptance for kernel inclusion could raise. Or do I forget
something important here?

Just my two cents worth :-)

bye,
Daniel

-- 
Daniel Mueller          http://www.danm.de
Berlin, Germany         OpenPGP: F9F982C1