361–370 of 379 posts
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As far as I am concerned I am not paying for my computer to be bugged. MINIX is a research project that is useful and interesting in its own right. That's what the EU is funding. GPS, the internet and the microchip were also publicly funded technologies. I don't think that anyone should object to the funding of these inventions because there are dubious uses of them (all of them sometimes in involuntary surveillance)…
Considering we have laws prohibiting the sale of surveillance technology to states suspected of human rights violations, as well as the sale of goods intended for misuse according to our own ethical standards (think medicines used in lethal injection executions) it would be quite asinine to look the other way claiming that fulfilling that particular research purpose exhausts all further uses. Particularly if it’s pot…
I specifically did not suggest "looking the other way" either, I just don't think the problem is open source operating system software that anyone can benefit from, it's involuntary surveillance, and I think that should be addressed legislatively rather than inhibiting publicly available research on very broadly applicable subjects.
Conversely, you could look at other research like the microchip, GPS and the Internet, all publicly funded to fulfill some defense purpose, and all having more than occasionally been used for indiscriminate surveillance. Would we be better off without these things? I don't necessarily assume a "no" to that, but it is fair to say that there are plenty of uses of these technologies that have had positive effects on society.
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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).…
And convincing Linus the rewritten versions are objectively better than the old ones.
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> "Open source" is not "more free" in any general sense And yet, this is the point that Mr. Tenenbaum has tried to make in TFA: "this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users" So let's make a point of disagreeing with him, at least.
I don't see how that constitutes a disagreement. The user in this case is Intel. The license gave them the freedom to make whatever proprietary changes they may have made to the software and stick it into their CPUs. That's of course not freedom in any general sense, but it's freedom for Intel to do whatever they wanted with it. Does that make my point more clear?
But anyway, that BSD is more permissive than GPL is a very obvious point. Why would Mr. Tenenbaum need to write about that? Why would he need some news to "reaffirm" it?
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> 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…
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...
> http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.php?id=faq&s[]=license#what_is_t...
you can read:
"What is the MINIX 3 license?
The MINIX 3 license is a clone of the Berkeley (BSD) license. In plain English, it says you can do whatever you like with the system provided that (1) you agree not to sue us under any conditions, and (2) you keep the credit lines in the source, documentation, and publicity unless other arrangements have been made. Specifically, you are free to modify the source code, redistribute it, incorporate it into commercial products with only the above restrictions."
Note the passage "unless other arrangements have been made". I am pretty sure Intel made such an agreement with the MINIX 3 developers for this reason.
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MIT license only states: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. This is weaker than what is in a BSD license: > 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. That is, BSD li…
So ... Intel violated the BSD license?
I wrote in
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15651860
that the MINIX 3 developers openly say in their FAQ that different agreements with them are possible. I would bet such an agreement exists - I don't believe Intel's lawyers would have tolerated such a legal liability.
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I don't see how that constitutes a disagreement. The user in this case is Intel. The license gave them the freedom to make whatever proprietary changes they may have made to the software and stick it into their CPUs. That's of course not freedom in any general sense, but it's freedom for Intel to do whatever they wanted with it. Does that make my point more clear?
Intel is software vendor. Or a "developer". They also use it, of course, but there are a number of magnitude more other users than Intel. Such as you and me, probably. But anyway, that BSD is more permissive than GPL is a very obvious point. Why would Mr. Tenenbaum need to write about that? Why would he need some news to "reaffirm" it?
That's strictly speaking, but what does being a user entail, by a commonly understood definition? I certainly can't operate the MINIX derivative running on a different CPU than the software I actually do use. I never made a conscious effort to start or stop it, in fact I didn't know about it until the other day. It is unclear what it does, but it's clear to me that I am not personally using it. Maybe its use benefits me somehow, in the same way a break pedal might benefit me while I'm riding the bus. Maybe it's used for surveillance.
> But anyway, that BSD is more permissive than GPL is a very obvious point. Why would Mr. Tenenbaum need to write about that? Why would he need some news to "reaffirm" it?
Not too keen on sitting here guessing what purpose Tanenbaum's letter had, but maybe to provoke a discussion? Maybe he's sincerely proud that his software is now so widely deployed? It seems beside the points I am making.
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Intel didn't ask him to work for free, read the letter again.
Without getting into the licence discussion: > [...]your engineering teams contacted me about some secret internal project and asked a large number of technical questions[...]. > [...]your engineers began asking me to make a number of changes[...] Those are two cases where Intel asked Tanenbaum to work for free. First as consultant and then implementing custom code modifications. Yes, not many people will charge for…
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.