Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Open Letter to Intel

cs.vu.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 379 posts

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#121

Post by [deleted] »

jochung wrote: post #98
delsarto wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#122

Post by phkahler »

arximboldi wrote: post #2

> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. Interesting conclusion, considering one of the "features" of the Intel ME is precisely to limit what the final user can do with their computer.

>> Interesting conclusion, considering one of the "features" of the Intel ME is precisely to limit what the final user can do with their computer.

The BSD license advocates have always considered other developers to be the "users" and even offer the freedom to deny the same freedom to those who run their software. GPL considers all those who run the software to be the users and tries to maximize their freedom. In the case of Intel ME it's not clear who the code is serving, but it's definitely not the person using the computer.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#123

Post by kevhito »

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…

Don't have heroes. Don't put people on a pedestal. People have flaws, quirks, and failures. Admire good people for the good that they do, despite their flaws.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#124

Post by jhasse »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #35
JepZ wrote: post #26

It is interesting to see that Andrew S. Tanenbaum released this letter to the public (probably to show that he was not directly involved in deploying Minix to all those chips), while saying that he is okay with the closed source nature, as long as there are good reasons to do so (to prevent causing any problems for him and for the person who made the decision at Intel). Hey Andrew, if you have no problem with Minix r…

That's an absolute non-sequitur and I think you know that. There is no reason that MINIX could not have been used in the ME even if it were GPLd, for example…

> There is no reason that MINIX could not have been used in the ME even if it were GPLd, for example…

There's definitely a reason against it if we're talking about GPLv3.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#125

Post by jhasse »

pjmlp wrote: post #36
popee wrote: post #16

And now I'm happy that Linux won

Won what? - Being the kernel of ChromeOS and Android, not accessible to majority of userspace and easily replaceable by anything else (e.g. Fuchsia). - Lost to macOS and Windows on the desktop It only won on the server room, and now it runs under Minix supervision.

> and easily replaceable by anything else (e.g. Fuchsia).

If it's so easy, why hasn't it happen yet?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#126

Post by jhoechtl »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #80

All Dr. Tanenbaum is saying is that it would have been the classy thing to let him know, nothing more. 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.

For the first time I would have hoped that Prof. Tanenbaum included a backdoor in the MINIX network stack. Now that would be kind of ... cool?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#127

Post by boomlinde »

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…

Free or open source software doesn't imply working for free. A copy of your software doesn't (necessarily) entail additional work.

I guess whether people in general "work for free" depends on how you define "work" and "free". I work on many different things purely for their utility to my friends and me personally, or just for the fun of creating something. I work and I gain something from it, so the time spent on it is paid for. Call it hobbies or normal social courtesy, it's still work by any reasonable definition. It's also not free; I expect it to benefit me in some way, whether it's by having a great time doing it or the satisfaction of seeing someone else enjoy the product or helping my friends have a good time.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#128

Post by badsectoracula »

mankash666 wrote: post #24
mk89 wrote: post #19

This "letter" smells so passive-aggressive... brr...

Exactly! The TLDR on it is - Intel followed the terms of the BSD license.

Another way to read it is that thanks to the BSD license, Intel got an entire OS for free to use for their backdoor core but that doesn't matter really - the important part is that MINIX is now the most widely used OS in the world :-)

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#129

Post by ramshanker »

mfukar wrote: post #21
ramshanker wrote: post #10

The guy missed one hell of a point on his resume for better part of a decade! More than that Personal satisfaction would be unimaginable given the magnitude of deployment.

Yeah, Andrew Fucking Tanenbaum needs to expand his resume.

Ohh, now that your replied in that tone, I googled him. :)

Obviously ammuters with non CS backgrounds can't be expected to know Who-is-Who of CS history. Even if I knew him, how often people explicitly find out the author of the articl? On mobile screen?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#130

Post by badsectoracula »

mfukar wrote: post #48
imron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If for nothing else that he now gets bragging rights over Linux

The bar can literally not go any lower

Of course it can go lower: he gets bragging rights for making the OS that the most widely deployed backdoor runs on - and judging from the linked article, it looks like he already started said bragging :-)
Post reply on HN