> Subject: Found GNU Driver for boards based on p3043 and fet3043 PCI ethernet chips
The '3043' is the VIA Rhine-I chip.
The current version is the VT83c100A Rhine-II.
> Someone send [sic: sent] me a GPL driver for their ethernet card which was on their
> install disk for a noname ethernet card. I didn't see it in the latest
> kernels so I wondered who should I forward it to for inclusion in the
> kernel. The driver has no authors except for an author line of Donald
> Becker
No, it should not be included into the kernel.
Because of both technical and copyright issues I wrote a replacement from
scratch:
ftp://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/drivers/via-rhine.c
The driver named 'via3043.c' is a obviously a quick hack: it's a merge of
rtl8139.c driver with some driver code likely written for a MS-DOS driver.
When I say merge, the author obviously did "s/rtl8139/p3043/". The
description and comments are otherwise unchanged from the rtl8139.c driver,
and thus very misleading.
It probably works, but it does a bunch of evil things such as
directly programming the 8254 timer
spin-loops of up to five seconds
The via3043.c driver also doesn't use the bus-master capabilities to receive
and transmit directly into skbuffs. It instead copies every packet.
Finally a legal statement: while the author wishes to remain anonymous, I
believe the 'via3043.c' driver does not violate a third-party copyright.
The GPL was retained on all versions, and the driver was only distributed as
source code intended for GPL systems. The author did originally fail to
note that the driver was a modified version, however this has since been
corrected or rendered moot. (I think it's obvious that it was based on one
of my drivers rather than written by me, so I'm not concerned with this
oversight.)
Donald Becker becker@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. 20771
301-286-0882 http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/people/becker/whoiam.html
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