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An Open Letter to Intel

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Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#91

Post by colejohnson66 »

rbanffy wrote: post #89

> this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users I'm sorry, but I don't feel free because of that. What I see is that I have proprietary code I never saw, never vetted and which I don't (and shouldn't) trust that's running on all my computers (not all, but you can get it) and that I don't have the freedom to remove, examine, modify or replace. Th…

This is why the GPL is so great IMO. It would force Intel to either release the source code or use something else.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#92

Post by 0xFFC »

xfer wrote: post #74
mankash666 wrote: post #14

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…

Intel contributes to Linux because they have horses in the race, it is not out of charity.

Nothing is out of charity in this world. Not even charity itself.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#93

Post by maccard »

lmm wrote: post #73
Fredej wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree that many companies have that attitude towards BSD versus GPL, but is there actually a rational basis for it? Given that you've apparently already gone through the legal process and found out that the GPL means what you think it means, why are you holding it to a higher standard than BSD?

GPL usage depends on how you're using it. If you have two pieces of software, an internal only (e.g. a dashboard/deployment tool), and an external product, using GPL'ed code has different ramifications for both deployments.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#94

Post by Wintamute »

Radim wrote: post #55
Wintamute wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere does it say that discussions with Intel in particular motivated the license change away from the GPL. Only discussions with unnamed corporations as long ago as 2000.

Your point being? It makes absolutely no difference whether the "you cost, me profit" corporation was Intel, Nvidia, Acme Inc or all above.

My point is that you are drawing odd/bad conclusions from a misreading of the information contained in the letter.

> You're thanking someone because they asked you to relicense your hard work so they can use it for free (BSD) and you complied?

Nowhere in the letter does it imply that the entity being thanked (Intel) is the same entity that motivated the author to change the license.

Intel used open source software according to the license they found it with. The author is pleased his software is powering global infrastructure, and is likely pleased he's contributed to human progress, but is slightly peeved he received no personal thank you as a matter of politeness/etiquette. I'm struggling to understand what criticism you have for this process. No-one has been dicked.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#95

Post by pjmlp »

therealmarv wrote: post #86

nah, Linus Torvalds wins. I really really doubt that Minix is more deployed than Linux... just think of three examples (and there are probably many more examples): * Linux in all variants running in billions of VMs and Containers. * Android. * There are not only Intel chips out there. So Kudos to Dr. Tanenbaum but adding all numbers I don't think we have Minix nearly as much deployed as Linux ;)

When Fuchsia gets more mature you can eventually remove Android from that list.

The stable NDK APIs are not Linux specific, ANSI C and C++ libraries are OS agnostic, and as of Android 8 the syscalls are white listed.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#96

Post by Wintamute »

geocar wrote: post #69
Wintamute wrote: post #13

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.

> 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…

How are you paying Andrew? That makes no sense.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#97

Post by fermigier »

digi_owl wrote: post #82
ekianjo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence is quite pretentious and completely unprovable. And if Linux had not existed we would have had GNU Hurd way earlier in all likelihood.

Torvalds himself seems to have claimed that had Hurd been usable back then, he would never have taken Linux as far as he did. Minix seems to have been barely on his radar, if at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX#Relationship_with_Linux

The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX greatly influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel.[citation needed] Torvalds used and appreciated MINIX,[17] [...] Early Linux kernel development was done on a MINIX host system, which led to Linux inheriting various features from MINIX, such as the MINIX file system.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#98

Post by jochung »

delsarto wrote: post #60
simias wrote: post #11

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…

(Edit: removed silly comment about a personal interaction. The letter has also had addendums making the intent more clear. I will add "shut up on the internet" to the list of things I've learnt from the author) I read this as, for want of a better word, snarky. I'd bet if it wasn't Minix, L4 would have been on the cards. That's another microkernel that runs in coprocessors like your phone's radios that probably nobod…

Having been on both sides of the equation: imagine if a complete stranger acts like they are your friend, even though you've never met them, and offers nothing in the way of reciprocal ice breaking. Now repeat this dozens of times and bias it towards the socially inept and spergy.

The only thing that works from the celeb side is to power through and intently turn the conversation back onto the fan. But that requires genuine interest that you may not have the energy for, and it may not be what _they_ are there for either. There is a reason comic con actors charge for autographs: it's a very light weight form of prostitution.

Fans are genuinely annoying. They break every social rule, and come with a one way sense of familiarity only possible through modern technology, which our primate brain is poorly equipped for.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#99

Post by throwaway246810 »

CVE-2017-5689 revealed that the AMT would _accept an empty password, allowing full remote code execution_. Tanenbaum portrays his BSD-licensed OS underlying this junk as a demonstration of "the maximum amount of freedom", and his only concern is that he would have liked to have known how popular this OS is now. If there was ever an example as to programmers being completely oblivious as to the ramifications of distributing their creations, this is it.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#100

Post by Wintamute »

digi_owl wrote: post #78
kunimu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Never mind that RMS' intent with GPL is to preserve the initial freedom into the distant future. If you get access to the source, so should everyone that comes after you. And he formulated this after he had some hard earned experiences with suppliers at MIT.

> If you get access to the source, so should everyone that comes after you.

Why should they? That is up to the software author.

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