Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
tomshardware.com
Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
1–10 of 60 posts
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#2No explanations, no apologies, just this:
We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback.
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#3How do you gaffe this bad? How is someone that incompetent in the decision making loop? Some random engineer creating the ucode or uploading it to the web doesn't come up with this kind of idea to change license language. These are edicts from management. I'd love for that conversation to leak in full.
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#4No explanations, no apologies, just this: We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback.
Would it change anything if they said "we are sorry"?
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#5No explanations, no apologies, just this: We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback.
Would it change anything if they said "we are sorry"?
Yes.
"That was a mistake, won't happen again" is an acknowledgement that they got it wrong and a promise not to do it again.
"We're changing it" is neither one.
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#6No explanations, no apologies, just this: We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback.
Would it change anything if they said "we are sorry"?
It'd be the same kind of "We're sorry" as the South Park BP oil spill commercial.
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#7Kudos to the debian team for their uncompromising stand - this may have set a precedent otherwise.
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#8How do you gaffe this bad? How is someone that incompetent in the decision making loop? Some random engineer creating the ucode or uploading it to the web doesn't come up with this kind of idea to change license language. These are edicts from management. I'd love for that conversation to leak in full.
That language is likely derived from a path similar to this:
"Marketing department" -- We are sick of seeing the world complain that our patches to these problems reduce performance by X percent. Hey "Legal Dept", can anything be done about that?
"Legal Dept" -- We will see what we can do...
Result, a new clause appears in the license file that says "no bench-marking".
With no one in the path ever having heard of the Streisand effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) (yes, Streisand effect is not a perfect fit here, but the 'publicity' part of the effect is what in fact has occurred).
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#9No explanations, no apologies, just this: We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback.
Well, at least they didn't make excuses or delay things, just said "don't worry I fixed it" basically. That's about the same thing I tell datacenters when they catch me seeding torrents.
Re: Intel Responds to Complaints About Microcode Benchmarking Ban
#10How do you gaffe this bad? How is someone that incompetent in the decision making loop? Some random engineer creating the ucode or uploading it to the web doesn't come up with this kind of idea to change license language. These are edicts from management. I'd love for that conversation to leak in full.
I saw a tweet somewhere (IIRC in the anandtech sidebar, unfortunately I'm not finding it right now) where the poster speculated that it was the EULA for a beta version of the microcode which leaked into the final version.