171–180 of 379 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 l…
#2. Exactly, seems to me an academic kind of thing, he helped them a lot, a little attribution would not have hurt, and the lawyers could have easily been told to pipe down. #3. It does offer the maximum freedom to some potential users, but no responsibilities to extend those freedoms to others. In my opinion this is why the GPL truly extends the maximum amount of freedom to everyone, users, lusers, abusers, and just…
The BSD license used by MINIX 3 requires attribution:
> http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=faq&s[]=license#what_is_t...
"The MINIX 3 license is a clone of the Berkeley (BSD) license. In plain English, it says you can do whatever you like with the system provided that (1) you agree not to sue us under any conditions, and (2) you keep the credit lines in the source, documentation, and publicity unless other arrangements have been made. Specifically, you are free to modify the source code, redistribute it, incorporate it into commercial products with only the above restrictions."
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…
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.
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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.
Nope. His letter point is clearly about widely(1) known debate(2) between him and Linus Torvalds, and ego massage. (1) widely, if you arent 25 years old proverbial "javascript developer" ;-) - as the debate took place in 1992. (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
"if you arent 25 years old proverbial "javascript developer" ;-)"
Why is this necessary?
Nonsense; the GPL does not require that one's competitors receive code, but rather one's users. It further requires that one may not prevent them from giving the code to others, with the same rights.
Thanks to the BSD, Intel's users are unable to patch, modify or extend the hardware & software they have bought.
> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users.
I think that I've demonstrated that the freedom has not accrued to users but rather to Intel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Deploying GPL code is only a legal process if you make it one.
If you're using it to write or deploy other GPL software, it's pretty much a straight forward affair. And if you're not using a GPL license, well, that's your problem: there's nothing stopping you from using the GPL to make all the hassle go away.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It doesn't have to be. The GPL is very clear; anyone with even a semi-decent high school education can read and understand it. A company which requires legal consultation in order to know how to use GPL code has bigger problems.
Of course, you can't both use GPLed code and deny your users' freedom. So don't do that. Sell hardware, sell services, just don't sell closed-source software.