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An Open Letter to Intel

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Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#281

Post by stinkytaco »

kodablah wrote: post #192
josteink wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also force Intel to give us a means to replace ME with something else which ultimately puts the user in control.

Nope, because they wouldn't use it then. I am not sure why people think the GPL had so much leverage over larger companies that will just build something in house.

But large companies use quite a bit of GPL software. I'm checked my phone, my PVR, my car media system and proprietary GPS I have and all of them have an open source license document that includes some GPL code.

For a hardware company, the GPL just isn't that much of a competitive disadvantage, since most of the software is written to work with their hardware.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#282

Post by bagacrap »

bhouston wrote: post #241
JohnBooty wrote: post #148

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…

I think he would of appreciated some type of compensation from Intel given its massive usage by a massive company. Not even a small thank you donation. It is sort of shitty on Intel's part to not compensate him at all and also they got a large number of questions/support from him. They should throw a donation of $1M his way. Even at that rate, it is a massive steal.

Yes, that's how I interpreted the joke about the license's failure to mention the appreciation of payment. Chump change to Intel is a big deal to an individual.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#283

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

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?

The WTFPL for one.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#284

Post by varjag »

teilo wrote: post #268
rahiel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The strict meaning of "Redistributions" in that clause means that Intel would have to be distributing the OS itself as a product in binary form. Deploying it in an embedded system, and selling that embedded system, particularly in a form where the user does not have access to the OS as a product, does not meet that definition. Tanenbaum himself concedes this point in this letter.

This is quite debatable, not something I'd bet a court case on.

One of my libraries with BSD 3-clause license was used in a U.S. government project. It did require particular hardware and couldn't really be deployed by any random user but they honored the mention clause without any prodding on my part.

My Bosch kitchen appliances came with a whole bunch of software licenses for embedded subsystems, even GPL ones. So it seems actual lawyers in a huge international corporation decided it constitutes distribution.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#285

Post by xmatos »

Like it or not, that enforces the beauty of GPL. I'm positively sure, if it wasn't it, linux wouldn't be in its position today. I actually prefer the LGPL, as it doesnt spread through, or "contaminate", the rest of your code base.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#286

Post by nebulous1 »

mseebach wrote: post #263
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…

You're conflating different things. Intel is free to use MINIX which is exactly the freedom the creator of MINIX intended when selecting the license. You are not a party to that transaction. That Intel uses this software for a purpose you disagree with is immaterial to this discussion. Had MINIX not been available under a permissive license, Intel would have found some other (but presumably more expensive) way to lar…

I don't believe he is conflating anything. The author of the letter puts forward the notion that using the BSD licence was a good decision because it maximised the probability of companies like Intel using it. The commenter is implying that there's nothing particularly good about Intel having the free ability to shove a closed source ME-11 into most of our computers, that using a different licence would have in fact stopped them doing so, and that, contrary to your point, may in fact have led to them releasing the source.

"not party to that transaction" and "immaterial to this discussion" have no place here, we're discussing an open letter and we're free to evaluate his position however we feel. If the author wanted to have a private conversation with Intel he was free to do so.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#287

Post by kbutler »

dhimes wrote: post #137
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.

Exactly. When I see something that my friend has found on facebook and I share it, I always acknowledge them for finding it. It's simply intellectual honesty/courtesy. A "thank you" would have been enough. Intel goofed; hopefully they'll make amends. This has nothing to do with legal requirements or financial compensation.

Learning about something from someone's social media post is completely separate from using someone's copyrighted work...

You have a legal and ethical responsibility to the creator of the work, not to whomever put it in your feed.

Of course, we should credit our grade school teachers each time we do arithmetic - Thanks, Mrs. Ashliman!

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#288

Post by ccalvert »

mcv wrote: post #211
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...

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…

"stroking his own ego is not what this is about. He doesn't need that."

Forgive me for interjecting politics into this debate, but we all know at this point that there is at least one highly successful egotist in this world who still needs to have his ego stroked on a regular (daily) basis. I admire Tanenbaum and doubt that he fits into this category, but the category does exist.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#289

Post by icebraining »

mseebach wrote: post #263
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…

You're conflating different things. Intel is free to use MINIX which is exactly the freedom the creator of MINIX intended when selecting the license. You are not a party to that transaction. That Intel uses this software for a purpose you disagree with is immaterial to this discussion. Had MINIX not been available under a permissive license, Intel would have found some other (but presumably more expensive) way to lar…

Right: non-copyleft free software makes it cheaper - and therefore more likely - for companies to screw people.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#290

Post by dchest »

teilo wrote: post #268
rahiel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The strict meaning of "Redistributions" in that clause means that Intel would have to be distributing the OS itself as a product in binary form. Deploying it in an embedded system, and selling that embedded system, particularly in a form where the user does not have access to the OS as a product, does not meet that definition. Tanenbaum himself concedes this point in this letter.

This doesn't make any sense. For the opposite opinion of many lawyers from many companies, see the list of licenses that come with multimedia systems in automobiles or in your smartphone.
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