Open Source

Western Digital believes in the value of open source as a user and contributor. We recognize open source's critical role in the growth and success of the technology industry today because it encourages a community to innovate, build, and share together. Western Digital also sees open source as a critical building block to its overall corporate and business strategy.

Open Source Projects

Western Digital contributes to and maintains many open source projects. Here are some examples of our work.

Linux Kernel - Zoned Storage

We make many contributions to the Linux kernel particularly in the subsystems related to storage to enable next generation storage technologies. One of our recent areas of focus has been Zoned Storage. Zoned Storage is an open, standards-based initiative to enable data centers to scale efficiently for the zettabyte storage capacity era. Related product: Ultrastar DC ZN540 NVMe ZNS SSD.

Sweet B

Sweet B is a library which implements public key elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) using the NIST P-256 and SECG secp256k1 curves. It is a core component of our ArmorLock Security Platform. To help build confidence in our cryptography library, we have open sourced it and also had it audited by the security research firm Trail of Bits. Related product:  G-Technology ArmorLock encrypted NVMe™ SSD

Open Titan

OpenTitan is the first open source project building a transparent, high-quality reference design and integration guidelines for silicon root of trust (RoT) chips. Leveraging our expertise in data infrastructure and open-source technologies, Western Digital is working with ecosystem partners to optimize the OpenTitan framework to meet the diverse security demands of data-centric storage use cases from the core to the edge, including machine-learning applications, smartphones and connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Check out our blog post describing our goals.

Western Digital Github

Western Digital also maintains an official GitHub repo for our own projects. Come by and check it out!

Open Source Organizations

Whether as a founder, member, or supporter, Western Digital works with the community to foster open source.

RISC-V Foundation

We are a founding member of the RISC-V Foundation, the steward of the RISC-V ISA. RISC-V ISA is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration.

CHIPS Alliance

We are a founding member of CHIPS Alliance. The CHIPS Alliance develops high-quality, open source hardware designs relevant to silicon devices and FPGAs.

Linux Foundation

We are a silver member of the Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral, trusted hub for developers to code, manage, and scale open technology projects. Under the Linux Foundation umbrella are many projects that we collaborate with.

FOSSi Foundation

We work with the FOSSi Foundation on various initiatives related to RISC-V and CHIPS Alliance, including the cocotb project and Embench benchmark. FOSSi Foundation’s mission is to promote and assist free and open digital hardware designs and their related ecosystems.

GPL Cooperation Commitment

As a user of and contributor to many open source projects licensed under version 2 of the GPL family of licensees, we recognize that open source compliance may be difficult and may result in mistakes. To grow the open source community and allow for good-faith actors to use our contributions under the GPL, we commit as follows:

Before filing or continuing to prosecute any legal proceeding or claim (other than a Defensive Action) arising from termination of a Covered License, Western Digital commits to extend to the person or entity (“you”) accused of violating the Covered License the following provisions regarding cure and reinstatement, taken from GPL version 3. As used here, the term ‘this License’ refers to the specific Covered License being enforced.

However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

Western Digital intends this Commitment to be irrevocable, and binding and enforceable against Western Digital and assignees of or successors to Western Digital’s copyrights.

Western Digital may modify this Commitment by publishing a new edition on this page or a successor location.

'Covered License' means the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2), the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1), or the GNU Library General Public License, version 2 (LGPLv2), all as published by the Free Software Foundation.

'Defensive Action' means a legal proceeding or claim that Western Digital brings against you in response to a prior proceeding or claim initiated by you or your affiliate.

'Western Digital' means Western Digital Corporation or its affiliates.

Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct

We recognize that open source is built by healthy communities. We believe a healthy community will thrive when all participants are treated with and treat others with care and respect. To show our commitment to this idea, we have adopted the Contributor Covenant to govern all our open source projects and the conduct of all Western Digital contributors in our projects and in the larger open source community.

Open Source in our Products

We believe in open source and use it in many of our products. When we use open source, we acknowledge that use with a Third-Party Notices section and also share copyleft source code. The Open Source Compliance Page is a centralized location where we post these compliance artifacts. If you believe we have missed something, please click here to contact us.

Many of our products are built by OpenChain conformant processes. OpenChain is an open ISO standard (ISO/IEC 5230) for open source compliance that lays out best practices in using open source to build trusted supply chains. As a Platinum Member and board member during the ISO certification process, Western Digital believes in the benefit of OpenChain conformance.

Open source: our view at Western Digital is that the most secure solutions are based on open and inspectable implementations combined with transparent policies and security practices.

SOURCE: RICHARD NEW, VICE PRESIDENT, R&D ENGINEERING

Open source silicon requires thinking about chip development in new ways. Western Digital has been at the forefront of this new technology, demonstrated by joining OpenTitan as one of our first commercial partners and the recent publication of their family of SweRV RISC-V cores. As RISC-V and open source silicon become increasingly ubiquitous throughout our industry, we look forward to building this open silicon future together with all contributors.

SOURCE: DOMINIC RIZZO, OPENTITAN PROJECT DIRECTOR, GOOGLE

Our People

Western Digital's teams make all the difference for our customers.

Damien Le Moal

Distinguished Engineer (manager)

View Profile

Jeremy Bauer

Technologist, Enterprise HDD Customer Firmware Engineer

Senthil Kumar Veluswamy

Technologist

View Profile

Jeffrey Lien

Principal SW Engineer

View Profile

Brandon Paupore

Software Development Engineer

View Profile

Aashish Parmar

Senior Engineer, E-HDD Firmware

View Profile

AR

Akhilesh Rn

Staff Developer, Software Development (Sys)

Careers

At Western Digital, our engineers use open source in many of our products and also contribute back. Please see our careers page for the latest opportunities.

Compare