[openadsl-devel] Re: Help with OpenBSD ADSL Driver needed

[Adam R. <ad...@ad...>]

Theo de Raadt wrote:

>Their firmware, can they make them under a BSD license?
>
>Please see /etc/firmware on an i386 machine for the idea.
>  
>

Theo,

A company called Traverse manufacture an ADSL card called the Pulsar. 
Presently they have a open source linux driver, a beta FreeBSD driver 
and a beta OpenBSD driver (http://sourceforge.net/projects/openadsl). I 
am using this card for the WAN side of a firewall box running OpenBSD 3.7.

However the OpenBSD driver seems somewhat unstable currently (it is beta 
after all), the Open Source driver has a mailing list on sourceforge 
with participation from Guy Ellis (employed by Traverse and wrote the 
original Linux driver). I have been discusing with Guy getting an 
improved OpenBSD driver, unfortunately he is not very familiar with 
OpenBSD and the original OpenBSD beta driver was developed by a contractor.

I read an article recently on OpenBSD and your good-self (I forget 
where), about trying to get better driver support for OpenBSD and 
working with manufacturers to acheive this; I think this was mainly 
around WiFi cards but I guess the same goes for all hardware really. As 
far as I know there are no ADSL cards currently supported by OpenBSD and 
so this could be a good oportunity for both parties?

I asked Guy Ellis, if Traverse would consider donating some ADSL cards 
to OpenBSD developers in exchange for them helping to develop a decent 
OpenBSD driver from the beta one. His response is below -

 >> In principle I am happy to run with this. However the main problem 
is that the purists will not accept a driver that isn't 100% Open 
Source. Since the firmware and Globespan proprietary routines are in a 
library they will probably tell you to go away. If not let me know.


Is it truly the case that you will tell them to go away? and if so do 
you know where I could contact OpenBSD developers who may be interested 
in participating in development of the Open Source portion of the driver?

Thanks

Adam Retter
(a OpenBSD newbie!)