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An Open Letter to Intel

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Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#211

Post by mcv »

rdslw wrote: post #169
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.

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...

It's certainly a joking jab at that debate, and while I'm sure he can appreciate the irony of overtaking Linux this way, stroking his own ego is not what this is about. He doesn't need that.

I think the reason he posts this is that, just like everybody else, he's not happy about Intel secretly introducing a massive security hole in their processors. Telling him they were using Minix on such a massive scale would have been polite, but it would also have informed Tanenbaum that Intel was running a secret OS on their processors.

What Intel did was not only foolish and harmful, it was also impolite. Plenty of people are addressing the foolish and harmful parts already, but the impolite part can only really be addressed by AST.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#212

Post by noncoml »

avar wrote: post #38
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…

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.

It’s not about money. Intel has improved the software, by making it more modular, but kept that improvement for themselves. That’s the problem with BSD IMHO.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#213

Post by jrs95 »

muninn_ wrote: post #176
rdslw wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Speaking of ego: "if you arent 25 years old proverbial "javascript developer" ;-)" Why is this necessary?

Why is this necessary? It's just a little joke.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#214

Post by PedroBatista »

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.

People inside these big corps tend to have these exploitative mind, even more than in SMBs, because they have a big name to throw around and that opens almost every door.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#215

Post by ctw »

zeveb wrote: post #177

> I have run across this before, when companies have told me that they hate the GPL because they are not keen on spending a lot of time, energy, and money modifying some piece of code, only to be required to give it to their competitors for free. 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 ot…

> Nonsense; the GPL does not require that one's competitors receive code, but rather one's users.

What's stopping an Intel competitor from also being a user? Am I wrong that all it would take is for an Intel competitor to buy an x86 computer with an Intel processor and then demand the source code? If that's the case, then it hardly seems like nonsense to me.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#216

Post by mcv »

wslh wrote: post #161
vanderZwan wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but assuming this is breaking the licence agreement, wouldn't suing for money only make legal sense if he could show that this infringement had cost him in some way? Beyond the valid complaint of this being a personal insult, that is.

The first good faith claim to do is to notice Intel to add the copyright notice.

It's rather late now, though, considering it's been around for years now without anyone knowing exactly because they did not include that copyright notice.

I have no idea what copyright law says about damages in a case where the infringing party tries to keep their large-scale infringement secret.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#218

Post by noncoml »

Wow. So he is super happy that his work is now more “widely used” than Linux, and only butthurt about not getting enough recognition?

No word about the elephant in the room?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#219

Post by brohee »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #186

Does anybody remember the other x86 competitor of the 90's Cyrix? (Is that the name?) What happened to them. Is there anyone out there with an x86 IP license that could build a super simple P3 or P4 class chip?

The Cyrix x86 IP was bought by VIA (by way of National Semiconductor), which still makes low power x86 CPU, often found in SFF, low power PC.
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