71–80 of 379 posts
> I guess that makes MINIX the most widely used computer operating system in the world, even more than Windows, Linux, or MacOS. I very much doubt that there's more (modern) Intel CPUs in the wild than there's say android devices (not containing Intel CPUs).
> (...) computer operating system (...) I guess that by "computer" he means "desktop".
Can't someone please find and publish a hack that allows anyone to use the Minix for his own purposes? I'd rather have a commercial antivirus vendor control my "machine in the machine" than some arbitrary 3 letter agency from a foreign country.
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It should be noted that Minix is code that was developed by university researchers. Researchers who are payed for by (primarily) European and Dutch tax euros. Also note that many of that time, energy and money to modify GPL code is not just programming time, but also a lot of legal advice time. With BSD-like license it should be immediately clear what you can do with the code (i.e. almost everything).
This is probably gonna be a controversial view but my experience is this as well: Deploying GPL code is a legal process. Deploying BSD is a development process. We spent thousands of dollars on legal advice when deploying GPL. In the end it was largely as we expected it to be: No significant action was needed beyond releasing the code to the components that we already got for free, with the minor modifications we had…
How many non-copyleft mini OSes exist? It's likely that Intel engineers were more familiar with the author's OS given the popularity of his book. All that aside, Intel did exactly what the license allows them to do. The license doesn't require a thank you note. If it makes HN feel any better, Intel is among the leading contributors to Linux, and MANY other open source projects. Intel doesn't expect a thank you note f…
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This struck me as bizarre as well. You're thanking someone because you relicensed your hard work so they can use it for free (BSD) and you complied? All for the stated reason that they don't have to relicense their work to other people so they could use it for free? /facepalm It's like some version of the Stockholm syndrome, deserves a name.
You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software. Open source can mean complete freedom, including the freedom to take the software, modify it, gain a competitive advantage and generate economic value, according to the license choice of the original author.
...and create backbox systems with backdoors that no user has the freedom to inspect, change or disable :-)
I can't tell if this is earnest or 2nd degree. Can people more familiar with Mr Tanenbaum's style enlighten me? Because if this is earnest I'm quite seriously baffled. I don't mind BSD at all and I won't comment on the political side of things but why on earth would you rejoice that you worked for free (I assume?) for Intel only to have your work end up in some user-hostile module forced on the users? Is Tanenbaum eg…
Of course it's earnest. If it wasn't he wouldn't have picked the BSD license, which rejects the notion that you're poorer today than yesterday just because someone started using some software you wrote.
BSD is my go-to license for my own code so I have no prejudice against it. That being said if some company contacted me about some of my code, asked me to do some modifications for free then used it to power a module that many people consider user-hostile and probable backdoor while not giving anything back, be it code, money or credit I don't think I'd write a blog post saying how happy I am that my code is so successful and how it proves that BSD is so much better than GPL.
It's one thing to say "the code is BSD, there's nothing wrong about what they did", it's an other thing to say "thank you Mr Intel for using my code without giving anything back, I just wish you had told me earlier so that I could have thanked you before!" which is frankly what this open letter sounds like to me.
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You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software. Open source can mean complete freedom, including the freedom to take the software, modify it, gain a competitive advantage and generate economic value, according to the license choice of the original author.
> You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software. Yes, I do have a problem understanding why people work for free. I don't see cops working for free, or bankers, or chip designers, or the guy who served my dinner working for free. Even Andrew doesn't work for free. I can understand licensing software that was built or purchased using [socialist] tax doll…
And yet, despite your inability to understand it, it continues to happen. A lot.
I suspect part of the challenge is your misuse (or just misapplication) of the word 'work'.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software. Open source can mean complete freedom, including the freedom to take the software, modify it, gain a competitive advantage and generate economic value, according to the license choice of the original author.
Nobody is denying the freedom for commercial use is a core part of open source software. However no developer has to make a certain business model easy for you, and I think it is well within the correct view to discourage such a business practice which restricts the freedom of users by making that impossible but allowing a "competitor" (if we really must think of it this way) to generate "economic value" (i.e selling…
And he formulated this after he had some hard earned experiences with suppliers at MIT.
I can't tell if this is earnest or 2nd degree. Can people more familiar with Mr Tanenbaum's style enlighten me? Because if this is earnest I'm quite seriously baffled. I don't mind BSD at all and I won't comment on the political side of things but why on earth would you rejoice that you worked for free (I assume?) for Intel only to have your work end up in some user-hostile module forced on the users? Is Tanenbaum eg…
Of course it's earnest. If it wasn't he wouldn't have picked the BSD license, which rejects the notion that you're poorer today than yesterday just because someone started using some software you wrote.
Professor Tanenbaum is one of the most respected computer scientists alive, and for Intel to include Minix in their chip and not let him know is kind of unprofessional and not very nice to say the least. That is his only (and quite fair) point.