Re: tigon firmware license

[william paul <wpaul_(_at_)_windriver_(_dot_)_com>]

[This was originally sent to Theo, the original poster, and supposedly
to the list, but I mind-o'ed and typed "openbsd-misc_(_at_)_openbsd_(_dot_)_org"
instead of "misc_(_at_)_openbsd_(_dot_)_org" so I'm re-sending.]

>> /etc/firmware/tigon-license says:
>>
>> "
>>  * Firmware for Alteon Tigon 1 chip.
>>  * Generated by genfw.c
>>  *
>>  * $FreeBSD: /c/ncvs/src/sys/pci/ti_fw.h,v 1.9 2000/07/20 22:24:42 wpaul Exp
$
>>
>> This is the license that applies to the tigon1 and tigon2 firmware files
>> used by the ti(4) driver.
>> "
>>
>> where have the actual terms been hidden? (freebsd(5.3R)'s ti_fw{,2}.h
>> is not a bit more verbose, either)

>Well, we know that this used to be free as a binary.  It is a piece of
>history.

>I did send wpaul mail, but he did not reply.  We know that we are missing
>the text... If someone can make him reply to my mail, that'd be good :)

Well, if you did send me an e-mail, I never got it. I just checked my
inbox at FreeBSD.org, I don't see any mail from you. Maybe you sent
it to wpaul_(_at_)_ctr_(_dot_)_columbia_(_dot_)_edu, but that address doesn't work anymore.
(Actually, I hope you didn't do that, because I know you sent me mail
at wpaul_(_at_)_freebsd_(_dot_)_org in the past; we corresponded that way about the
3Com "Typhoon" driver.)

Anyway, I kept the firmware source, sample driver source, and manuals
that I downloaded from Alteon's web once upon a time. You can find
them all at:

http://www.freebsd.org/~wpaul/Alteon

You want the following files:

-rw-r--r--   1 wpaul  wpaul  111599718 Jan 16  2001 fw.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 wpaul  wpaul     617617 Dec 23  2000 opendrv.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 wpaul  wpaul   23023917 Dec 23  2000 openfw.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 wpaul  wpaul     751516 Dec 23  2000 pcinic.pdf
-rw-r--r--   1 wpaul  wpaul    1028984 Dec 23  2000 tigonbk.pdf

The fw.tar.gz file has a snapshot of my build tree from the time.
It includes the build tools, both in binary and source form (binaries
are from FreeBSD 4 though, which probably won't be much use). At the
time, there were a couple of small patches you had to apply to
binutils to make it work, and you needed gcc 2.7. The unpacked source
trees for gcc and binutils included in the archive already have the
patches applied, so you should be able to build your own tools just
by doing a make clean and a configure/build. Note the following:

 * Generated by genfw.c
 * Built on Wed Jul 26 10:40:31 2000 by wpaul_(_at_)_brak_(_dot_)_osd_(_dot_)_bsdi_(_dot_)_com
 * OS: FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE
 *
 * Note: this is really firmware release 12.4.11 with some minor
 * modifications. Release 12.4.13 apparently fails to handle 10/100
 * modes in some cases.

The original source archives for both 12.4.11 and 12.4.13 are included
in fw.tar.gz. The 12.4.11 directory is the one actually used for image
included with FreeBSD.

The pcinic.pdf and tigonbk.pdf files are the hardware and firmware
API manuals, respectively. The opendrv archive contains Alteon's
sample driver source for Windows (NDIS) and Solaris. Somewhere in
opendrv.tar.gz or openfw.tar.gz are the patch files that need to
be applied to gcc and binutils to create working build tools.

Sadly, I don't think any of the code actually contains license terms.
Back when I downloaded the development stuff, there was a click-through
license agreement on the Alteon website, but both the web site and
Alteon are long gone. I don't remember anything that specifically
forbade redistributing compiled firmware images.

Alteon never gave me any flack for including the firmware images with
the FreeBSD distribution. I assume that these days Broadcom owns what
little is left of Alteon's IP (the BCM57xx is the tigon3, based on
the same hardware design as the tigon2 but with vastly re-written
firmware).

Note that Alteon never released the source for the Tigon 1 firmware.
That was available as a header file only, but was also distributed
via the same page on Alteon's web site.

-Bill

-- 
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of Unix-Fu
                 wpaul_(_at_)_windriver_(_dot_)_com | Wind River Systems
=============================================================================
              <adamw> you're just BEGGING to face the moose
=============================================================================