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

141–150 of 379 posts

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#141

Post by mtgx »

rahiel wrote: post #131
jhasse wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I guess Minix' license, which allows this kind of behaviour, is the very reason Intel chose Minix in the first place. I imagine it would be very complicated to get management approval for informing Dr. Tannenbaum about the usage in Intel's ME. IMHO if he has a problem with the way things w…

The Minix 3 license contains [0]: * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. So it looks like Minix's license does require the copyright/license to be included in distributions. [0]: https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...

So could he sue Intel for about a billion dollars now?

Also, my guess is this is part "security through obscurity", part Intel not wanting everyone to know that they used someone else's code for its chips' firmware.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#142

Post by gnode »

jhasse wrote: post #103
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.

> 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. I guess Minix' license, which allows this kind of behaviour, is the very reason Intel chose Minix in the first place. I imagine it would be very complicated to get management approval for informing Dr. Tannenbaum about the usage in Intel's ME. IMHO if he has a problem with the way things w…

There's a difference between publishing with attribution, and informing the original author.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#143

Post by geocar »

boomlinde wrote: post #127
geocar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I guess whether people in general "work for free" depends on how you define "work" and "free".

Then allow me to be clear:

If you want to do something, and you get some kind of psychic reward for it; like volunteering in a soup kitchen, then that's great. But if you're only doing that because you're afraid of going to hell, then someone has convinced you to work for free.

If you make some software, and someone tells you how great it would be if it did different things, and then gets offended when you send them your day-rate, so you do it anyway, then someone has convinced you to work for free.

If you've got a more useful definition of "working for free" then I'm happy to hear it, and entertain it, but understand this kind of anathematic servitude is what I'm pointing to:

I think these guys who go around trying to convince people that releasing "open source" is somehow "more free" and that "freedom is good" is a little bit like we've always been at war with Eastasia. It doesn't make sense to me: In a twisted sort of way, a slaveowner is more free than a non-slaveowner because they don't have obligations (like to work), but it doesn't make this sort of thing right. Being a slaveowner isn't right even if being free is.

> A copy of your software doesn't (necessarily) entail additional work.

The nth copy of my software cost 1/n of my time. One way to consider this is as n gets large, the cost goes to zero, but another way to consider it is as n gets large, the value of my time goes to infinity.

I'm in the latter category, and perhaps this is confusing becauseI contribute to, and release a fair amount of Free Software. However if the only thing that can approach being worth my time is your time, then you'll see why I can't consider any "open source" license for my own software: I don't work for free.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#144

Post by josteink »

pjmlp wrote: post #95
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.

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

And Android can finally throw out its biggest chunk of meaningfully open-source source-code so far (from an end-user/modder perspective).

At that point Android is not going to be meaningfully open any more, and might as well be considered a closed platform on par with iOS.

I wonder how/if that will impact the platforms popularity.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#145

Post by Tistel »

competition keeps the herd healthy. Somebody should make an ARM laptop/desktop that is not riddled with three letter government agency spyware (a ring -3 web server! Hidden from the person who bought the CPU! Did I say you could do that? Unbelievable). Also, from a basic CS standpoint, having a whole CPU being wasted is inefficent.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#146

Post by Jedd »

geocar wrote: post #143
boomlinde wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I guess whether people in general "work for free" depends on how you define "work" and "free". Then allow me to be clear: If you want to do something, and you get some kind of psychic reward for it; like volunteering in a soup kitchen, then that's great. But if you're only doing that because you're afraid of going to hell, then someone has convinced you to work for free . If you make some software, and someone tell…

Clarity would be ideal.

Rather than cite two confused examples of 'work for free', can you please just define 'work'?

Then, perhaps, 'free'.

The reason a lot of people eschew the phrase 'open source' is because it leads to the kind of confusion manifesting in your last paragraph.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#147

Post by _pmf_ »

That's a commendable level of passive-aggressiveness, but the whole affair warrants it. I think it would have been for Intel's and the general public's benefit (given the impact of potential issues) if there had been some cooperation with Tanenbaum himself.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#148

Post by JohnBooty »

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…

It seems entirely earnest.

I think the Hacker News crowd is just a little baffled because there are some conflicting emotions on display from Dr. T here. Conflicting emotions are a very human thing to have, and are guaranteed to confuse the engineer crowd.

1. He's glad Minix is useful to others

2. He's slightly hurt that Intel repeatedly asked him for help (which he provided) but never bothered to thank him or even let him know the purpose of their inquiries. ("That certainly wasn't required in any way, but I think it would have been polite to give me a heads up, that's all.")

3. He admits that his choice of license permits this behavior, so he (slightly grudgingly) accepts their choice ("If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users")

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#149

Post by JohnBooty »

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…

Snarky? Yeah, in a way. Honestly he just seems a little hurt that they didn't extend the courtesy of letting him know what they were going. But at the end he admits that he's the one who picked that license.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#150

Post by wongarsu »

pulse7 wrote: post #12
amelius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And it also allows others (e.g. the three-letter agencies) to spy on the user. I wonder how Tanenbaum feels about all that.

If Minix's license wouldn't be BSD, they would use some other BSD licensed OS or develop it's own...

They chose Minix, so it seems reasonable to assume that Minix was the best option. If Minix would not have been BSD, they would have had to choose a worse option or spend significant money to build their own OS. Both options would have cut into ME's budget and might have reduced its capabilities.

"If A wouldn't, then B would" is a weird argument imho. It's basically equivalent to saying "If we can't destroy C in one blow, there's no point in attacking them".

Post reply on HN