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An Open Letter to Intel

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Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#271

Post by mcguire »

Fredej wrote: post #65
jvdh wrote: post #20

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…

I have a suspicion that you need new lawyers. Having two different processes for two very common licenses seems a little off. The two cases aren't that different, legally.

The GPL does require some extra work, but it's on the technical side, to make sure you're shipping all the source that you need to ship.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#272

Post by Crespyl »

Fnoord wrote: post #206
josteink wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Fuchsia is open source [1] [2] though not specifically GPL. It uses a myriad of licenses. > I wonder how/if that will impact the platforms popularity. It won't. Vast majority of users don't care about open source, and developers won't have to care. The kernel and userland get replaced, but the underlying Android OS (excluding GApps) remains open source. [1] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror [2] https://en.wikipedia.o…

With both the kernel and userland being replaced what, exactly, do you consider the Android OS to consist of?

I assume you're referring to the Java based frameworks and Dalvik/ART runtime pieces, but I would usually consider those part of userland, and your comment is a little unclear.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#273

Post by bm1362 »

For anyone unfamiliar with Minix, it appears to be a tiny OS:

> MINIX 3 is a free, open-source, operating system designed to be highly reliable, flexible, and secure. It is based on a tiny microkernel running in kernel mode with the rest of the operating system running as a number of isolated, protected, processes in user mode. It runs on x86 and ARM CPUs, is compatible with NetBSD, and runs thousands of NetBSD packages.[1]

Something about this [2] made me feel bad for the author, I can't imagine building software for a few decades, getting excited about a conference and then no one submitting any papers.

[1] http://www.minix3.org/

[2] > Unfortunately, the MINIXCon 2017 conference had to be cancelled due to the small number of talks submitted

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#274

Post by nacs »

thrillgore wrote: post #257

He's gloating over a significant security flaw baked into Intel hardware.

His code is running on the vast majority of PCs produced, thats something to gloat over regardless of whether he agrees with the usage or not.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#275

Post by Fredej »

craigsmansion wrote: post #178
Fredej wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a legal process. 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.

That's true. Releasing other open source software using GPL software is much simpler. But if it's desirable to deploy closed source software GPL may not be the right choice unless you have time to sit down and consider the legal ramifications. In many cases there may be none if you use it in the right way but it should be and is being considered when companies decide consider whether or not to use open source software.

That part is often significantly simpler with BSD which is why it's significantly easier to just allow BSD and have a case-by-case basis for GPL.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#276

Post by foodstances »

burntsushi wrote: post #181
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…

> IMHO if he has a problem with the way things worked out, he should have chosen a different license. This is a classic conflation of legalese and ethics/decorum/professional courtesy. Just because something is legal doesn't make it good, and just because something is good doesn't make it legal. For example, I abhor those who take credit for other peoples' work. But I use a license on software I write that permits fo…

What license allows one to take credit for another's work?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#277

Post by Someone »

Fredej wrote: post #267
lmm wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one of your employees accidentally copies even a single bit of GPL-licensed code into your privately licensed code or statically links against such code even once, and it gets ‘outside’ in any way, you legally have to release that version of your code under the GPL. > With BSD-licensed code, that risk is way smaller. The worst you have to do is add a few (or quite a few thousand. Go check Setting/General/About/L…

Where do you get the $150,000 figure from? I would disagree that the situation is the same. The way to remedy the BSD situation is simple attribution. The way to remedy the GPL situation is release of the entire source code. >> Worse, the source code of all versions from _before_ that checkin automatically become GPL-licensed (because they contain code that, transitively, becomes GPL because it later was linked with…

(Aside: it doesn’t matter whether B calls A; linking with it is sufficient. In your example, B’s source became GPL licensed because it was linked with a publicly released A)

My logic was incorrect. I assumed that the exact same source code for now GPL licensed B from earlier revision revisions would have to be GPL licensed, too (and because of it, anything linked with that, linked with code linked with that, etc.).

However, licensing (unlike copyright) doesn’t work that way. Copyright owners can even release the exact same set of source code 7nder multiple licenses.

My conclusion still stands, though. Companies are right to worry about using GPL-licensed software.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#278

Post by dbolgheroni »

A lot of comments seems to converge on a license flamewar, almost blaming the choice of MINIX on using a permissive license like the BSD.

It is not a license problem. Nor Mr. Tanenbaum position on "being glad" of MINIX being used on billions of x86 computers. Intel hiding code on all chips is the problem. Intel opening backdoors (maybe not intentionally, due to bugs) is the problem. Not being able to easily disable or update this code is the problem.

If it wasn't the MINIX, Intel would use something else. If there wasn't, they would write their own OS for it.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#279

Post by Spivak »

foodstances wrote: post #276
burntsushi wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO if he has a problem with the way things worked out, he should have chosen a different license. This is a classic conflation of legalese and ethics/decorum/professional courtesy. Just because something is legal doesn't make it good, and just because something is good doesn't make it legal. For example, I abhor those who take credit for other peoples' work. But I use a license on software I write that permits fo…

What license allows one to take credit for another's work?

Any license without required attribution like "The Unlicense" .

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#280

Post by wolfgke »

bm1362 wrote: post #269
wolfgke wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #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. 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 t…

I believe Intel did give attribution, but to MINIX itself. It really is just an ask for a 'hey, thanks' that was deserved.

Hackers have problems understanding this kind of "vanity issues" (I also openly admit that I have difficulties).

I am not aware that Intel gave any credit that is visible to the end-users of their processors (otherwise I would surely have seen it, since my laptop has a Skylake processor - so it uses MINIX 3). I am also not aware that my laptop included a leaflet that mentioned MINIX 3 somewhere.

So my assumption rather is that Intel's lawyers reached an agreement with the license holders of MINIX 3 that they don't have to give credit (which is perfectly fine - even the quote in my parent post mentions this possibility). But if they did such an agreement they said that it is perfectly fine to them (in particular for Andrew S. Tanenbaum) that Intel does not credit them publicly. I thus consider it as rather unfair to complain when such an agreement exists, because one typically does not demand such an agreement if one plans to credit them nevertheless.

So I rather believe what happened is this: Intel came to the MINIX 3 developers to get them to sign such an agreement, which allows Intel not to give attribution. Andrew S. Tanenbaum signed it, because it sounded too good to be true and gave MINIX 3 some very renowned key customer. But he did not consider that this might put MINIX 3 into very common use without any users being aware of it. So he "suddenly" realized the loophole of this agreement and now considers himself treated unfairly.

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