[ofw] what's up with the OFA Windows project?

[Jan Bottorff]

>Why were optimizations added to the Windows
>stack specifically to support Microsoft MPI that are not usable by
other
>applications or MPI versions?  

I'm curious how changes that are in an open source tree are "not usable"
by others? Everything contributed is covered by the BSD license, which
gives pretty much unrestricted use. Are you saying there are
contributions that are not covered by the BSD license? And those people
using the OpenFabrics source tree for commercial uses will have to
filter those parts out?

It seems like most open source project works on a smorgasbord style and
everybody can contribute whatever they contribute. Some projects might
have a filter (or multiple filters) applied to that most open set of
contributions to also produce some filtered set of changes. As an
example, there is not just one distro of Linux, there are lots. Each
distro is some filtering of the total set of changes available, and
different filtering entities have different goals and criteria.

It sounds like if some individual wants to create some specific filtered
subset of OpenFabrics changes, there is nothing stopping them. I suppose
one question is how is "OpenFabrics" defined? Is it the table where
everybody puts there contribution to the smorgasbord, or is it some
filtered subset of everybody's contributions? 

I think reality is that many of us are part of a community of
contributors, but at the same time we are competitors in the marketplace
and have our own agenda that determines what feature slices we view as
helpful, neutral, or hostile to our individual goals. I fully expect
Microsoft, and every other contributor, to make contributions oriented
toward making their overall solution more attractive to the marketplace.


As this project is under a dual license (BSD and GPL like I believe),
there is absolutely no obligation for any of us to contribute anything.
We do so purely because we believe the benefits of doing so are greater
than the benefits of not doing so. I assume there are
people/organizations that use the OpenFabrics software, and potentially
receive enormous benefits from that use, and never contribute anything,
and based on the dual license, this is perfectly ok.

Jan