[Rdma-developers] Re: [openib-general] OpenIB and OpenRDMA: Convergence on common RDMAAPIs and ULPs for Linux

[Grant Grundler]

On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 06:24:46PM -0700, Caitlin Bestler wrote:
> Oh that's a great development plan for me to propose
> to my business people. Let's go write lots of code,
> and *after* we write it the IB people (our competitors)
> have agreed to *look* at it (but they're all busy, don't
> forget) and *then* we just might get merged in.

You will never get a guarantee your code will go into kernel.org
regardless of which path you take.
I've seen three of the lead developers (a) promise to
review any proposed code changes and (b) indicate they
are willing to merge in support for RNICs.

That's more than most people get.

> If nobody is willing to discuss what the characteristics
> of this merged API will look like *before* we have to 
> code it then there is no motivation to work inside OpenIB
> at all.

The openib.org APIs today only exists as code. Bob Woodruff
is writing a paper documenting some of the interfaces but it's
not done yet.

Code is the primary currency to exchange ideas in open source
forums.  It doesn't have to be working code - psuedo code is
probably sufficient to start with in this case.

Look at the relevant openib.org header files (e.g. ib_verbs.h,
ib_user_verbs.h) and make a list of changes needed for it to be
useful to an RNIC.  Just pointing at RNIC-PI isn't interesting.

hth,
grant