For those of you interested in using the open source firmware instead of the proprietary firmware for the BCM5719 network card, the latest stable release (0.6.12) is available via fwupd and LVFS. My understanding is that this version will be included in future shipments from RCS as well.
If you're on a Linux distribution that includes fwupd 1.5.2+, you can switch using the following command:
sudo fwupdmgr switch-branch
Note that after the update, it's best to completely power cycle the system - that is to say that the host (POWER9), BMC (AST2500), and the NIC (BCM5719) all have to be restarted, and so powering off the machine and unplugging it for a good 30 seconds is your best option after the update completes
You can find the source code here:
https://github.com/meklort/bcm5719-fwSpecial thanks to:
- Hugo Landau for his effort on reverse engineering the proprietary firmware. You can read about that here: https://www.devever.net/~hl/ortega
- Richard Hughes for fwupd and his changes to support flashing the bcm5719.