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An Open Letter to Intel

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Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#331

Post by dhimes »

kbutler wrote: post #287
dhimes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I'm not sure I follow you here. When a friend shares an article, for example, the article comes as the owner put it on the web- page, author, etc. When I share that article, I say something like "h/t to kbutler for the find" That give credit in my circle to the person in my circle who found it. It's just a courtesy.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#332

Post by JohnStrange »

cortesoft wrote: post #322
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…

If you are worried about this un-vetted blob, it means you don't trust Intel; if you don't trust Intel, why does it matter that they have this blob running in 'god' mode? They ARE the CPU, so they aren't just god 'mode' they are god itself. You are trusting the CPU to do what you ask it to do. If intel were to do something shady, they wouldn't need a un-vetted blob of code to do it, they could do it directy in the CP…

Maybe you've got it backwards? Maybe many people trusted Intel until they learned about the ME and how hard it is to switch it off, and the fact that if you switch it off you should use a special flag requested by the NSA that was previously unpublished.

I certainly trust Intel way less than before some of the more fishy details about the Intel ME got out.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#333

Post by varjag »

jethro_tell wrote: post #321
varjag wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>So it seems actual lawyers in a huge international corporation decided it constitutes distribution. I mean, they could also just assume that shipping three sheets of paper with each washer is just cheaper than finding out.

…which still supports my point is that it's hardly trivial and clear-cut issue.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#334

Post by noncoml »

X86BSD wrote: post #320
noncoml wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not a problem. You are not entitled to the work of others. And the original bsdl code is just as available to you as it was to them for you to improve upon in a similar way.

> You are not entitled to the work of others

I think you missed the point, or I didn't convey it correctly.

I am not talking from the point of view of a third party, but rather that of the author of the original software.

If somebody uses my software and improves it, then it’s only fair that I get to see the changes.

That’s why AGPL 3 is the license of choice for my code.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#335

Post by vorotato »

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…

Sure but polite is often not profitable. Instead make your licenses line up with your wishes. It's another way of saying, "Hey you didn't say you needed it".

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#336

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #46
bartkappenburg wrote: post #37

From his CV: One of the early users of MINIX was Linus Torvalds. He began modifying MINIX to add new features that he thought were needed. Over a period of time he had modified almost everything and launched it as a new operating system, Linux. It is fairly safe to say that had I not written MINIX there would have been no Linux.

The last sentence is quite pretentious and completely unprovable. And if Linux had not existed we would have had GNU Hurd way earlier in all likelihood.

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#337

Post by yellowapple »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #258
keganunderwood wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"IIRC, some contributions are v2 or later, but as long as a majority of the code is v2 only, the whole package is v2."

If even one component is v2 rather than "v2 or later", then (I'd assume) the whole project is v2-only, majority or no. It's also not clear if it's permissible to make contributions under "v2 or later" licensing terms, since those contributions are derivative works of Linux itself (which is v2-only).

This will almost certainly always be the case, since changing Linux's license to "GPLv2 or later" (let alone GPLv3) would require unanimous consent from every contributor (and seeing as how - IIRC - one or more said contributors are dead, that consent is thus impossible to achieve unanimously).

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#338

Post by teddyh »

Wintamute wrote: post #100
digi_owl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind that RMS' intent with GPL is to preserve the initial freedom into the distant future. If you get access to the source, so should everyone that comes after you. And he formulated this after he had some hard earned experiences with suppliers at MIT.

> If you get access to the source, so should everyone that comes after you. Why should they? That is up to the software author.

Is this the programmers’ version of “I got mine”?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#339

Post by abiox »

throwaway246810 wrote: post #99

CVE-2017-5689 revealed that the AMT would _accept an empty password, allowing full remote code execution_. Tanenbaum portrays his BSD-licensed OS underlying this junk as a demonstration of "the maximum amount of freedom", and his only concern is that he would have liked to have known how popular this OS is now. If there was ever an example as to programmers being completely oblivious as to the ramifications of distri…

i'm not sure what your point is, exactly. do you imagine that if only minix didn't exist, this would never have happened?

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#340

Post by AnkhMorporkian »

ccalvert wrote: post #288
mcv wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I honestly can't tell if you mean Trump or Torvalds.
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