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An Open Letter to Intel

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251–260 of 379 posts

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#251

Post by fapjacks »

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…

Absolutely. This is my first thought, too. What a ridiculous idea, that we have somehow achieved maximal freedom by giving Intel the legal means to hide from me what I'm being forced to run against my will.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#252

Post by lisper »

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.

So a large corporation does something non-classy. What else is new?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#253

Post by mcv »

ramshanker wrote: post #129
mfukar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I suppose you're right, but he's famous enough that a lot of people in the CS world recognise him by name, by initials, or by url.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#254

Post by antirez »

I'm very skeptic about people saying that with GPL things would go differently. I see it more real world that Intel would either pick something else and inferior, or rewrite it from scratch producing some kind of internal corporate little monster. Result: a very widely distributed product would be worse, developers working at Intel having to deal with some only-internal project without outside applications or interest, and so forth. Now at least they: 1) Work at an open code. 2) May contribute fixes in the future. 3) Developers can use the experience to use the same code base elsewhere in the future. 4) Who joins and knows Minix can be productive faster without learning something internally produced. BSD sounds like a license that allows companies to steal value, but in that case it only improves the global outcome. On the other side BSD is a bit of a real problem in the cloud because it limits two of the most important business models of OSS code: services and products, but only in case of software you sell as-a-service.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#255

Post by [deleted] »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #246
jwilk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some do, some don't. The BSD licence that MINIX 3 uses actually requires giving credit: Copyright (c) 1987, 1997, 2006, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands All rights reserved. Redistribution and use of the MINIX 3 operating system in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: [...] Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the a…

Exactly, a lot of people think of the BSD license as not reserving any rights, but it actually does reserve a few rights, such as the preservation of the copyright notice. A license that actually reserves no rights would be something like CC0.

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#256

Post by drewbug »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #246
jwilk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some do, some don't. The BSD licence that MINIX 3 uses actually requires giving credit: Copyright (c) 1987, 1997, 2006, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands All rights reserved. Redistribution and use of the MINIX 3 operating system in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: [...] Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the a…

Exactly, a lot of people think of the BSD license as not reserving any rights, but it actually does reserve a few rights, such as the preservation of the copyright notice. A license that actually reserves no rights would be something like CC0.

Or the WTFPL ;)

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#258

Post by colejohnson66 »

keganunderwood wrote: post #243
colejohnson66 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means they could’ve used Linux if they wanted to

Why can't Linux use gpl v2 or later? Because Linus doesn't want to?

Linux is version 2. Linus is adamant about not using version 3. IIRC, some contributions are v2 or later, but as long as a majority of the code is v2 only, the whole package is v2.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#259

Post by fhood »

mintplant wrote: post #245
fhood wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it works great. I know very few software companies that will go anywhere near the thing. Good job GPL /s

Have you considered that developers may have motivations other than attracting as many companies as possible to make millions off of their free labor?

Yeah, but it inconveniences me

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#260

Post by znpy »

I think it's foolish of Mr Tanenbaum to expect how Intel used Minix in their super-secret project. I mean, it's super-secret. Telling him "Congratulation, Minix is now the most widely used OS in every x86 pc, but we cannot tell you why and how" would have blown pretty much everything. Any average person would have done 2+2 and would have understood what was going on.

Beside this... I think it is important that this would not have happened if Minix was licensed under the GPL. Not this way, at least. Intel would have had to find another OS (possibly paying for it) or develop one ex-novo (again, paying for it). So it would have happened anyway, but at least it would have been much more expensive for Intel.

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