Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Open Letter to Intel

cs.vu.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 379 posts

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#351

Post by mseebach »

icebraining wrote: post #289
mseebach wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tell that to Microsoft, Oracle, SUN, IBM, Novell and SCO.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#352

Post by [deleted] »

yrro wrote: post #293
teilo wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there case law to back this up?

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#353

Post by [deleted] »

Someone wrote: post #107
lmm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that many companies have that attitude towards BSD versus GPL, but is there actually a rational basis for it? Given that you've apparently already gone through the legal process and found out that the GPL means what you think it means, why are you holding it to a higher standard than BSD?

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. Worse, the source code of all versions from _before_ that checkin automatically become GPL-licensed (because they contain code that, transitively, bec…

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#354

Post by firethief »

AnkhMorporkian wrote: post #340
ccalvert wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It has to be Torvalds. They said "highly successful".

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#355

Post by ekianjo »

ksk wrote: post #301
ekianjo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>And if Linux had not existed we would have had GNU Hurd way earlier in all likelihood. Is that provable? :)

RMS said it himself.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#356

Post by sillysaurus3 »

mseebach wrote: post #349
madez wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. We are not a first party in that transaction, but feel very much the consequences. Therefore it does involves others. Most actions have an influence on others and therefore there are responsibilities for the consequences. If yo…

Your beef is with Intel and the ME (specifically, the inability to disable it), not with Dr. Tanenbaum, MINIX or the BSD license. There is no causal chain from these to the Intel ME. It may feel good to have a target to direct anger at, but it's not the right target and it's counterproductive. Free software, including that under the BSD license, has made computing vastly safer.

[the BSD license] has made computing vastly safer.

You have to at least stop and wonder whether that's true, though.

Your point of view and their point of view are both valid.

Unfortunately, both of you can be right, and we all have to live with that ambiguity.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#358

Post by nerdponx »

phkahler wrote: post #122
arximboldi wrote: post #2

> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. Interesting conclusion, considering one of the "features" of the Intel ME is precisely to limit what the final user can do with their computer.

>> Interesting conclusion, considering one of the "features" of the Intel ME is precisely to limit what the final user can do with their computer. The BSD license advocates have always considered other developers to be the "users" and even offer the freedom to deny the same freedom to those who run their software. GPL considers all those who run the software to be the users and tries to maximize their freedom. In the…

In that case, BSD license advocates are delusional if they think their license does any good in the world. BSD-licensed code is charity for the ultra-rich, plain and simple.

And perhaps they have no interest in doing good in the world. In that case, they can all go to hell.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#359

Post by taneq »

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 perfectly free to not use Intel processors, and this 'GPL vs the world' argument is orthogonal to the BSD license.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#360

Post by brianon99 »

Dear Tanenbaum, in case you are reading this, thank you for creating Minix. I have the first edition of your Design and Implementation of OS. That enjoyable read makes me a programmer now. Your insights is ever-lasting. Your humbleness marks you as the best computer scientist. Thank you.
Post reply on HN