51–60 of 379 posts
> when companies have told me that they hate the GPL because they are not keen on spending a lot of time, energy, and money modifying some piece of code, only to be required to give it to their competitors for free Some piece of code that also cost time (and possibly someone's else money) to develop, and that they got for free?
This struck me as bizarre as well. You're thanking someone because you relicensed your hard work so they can use it for free (BSD) and you complied? All for the stated reason that they don't have to relicense their work to other people so they could use it for free? /facepalm It's like some version of the Stockholm syndrome, deserves a name.
As such wider acceptance is something to celebrate. It might also be a (partial) vindication that an alternative design you absolutely hate and tried to kill is a huge success and is everywhere from supercomputers to cell phones.
I don't understand why people put stuff out under the Berkley License and then complain about a lack of credit or a lack of reimbursement (in support or money) for the use of their code. Isn't that the actual point of the license?
Intel telling him about it at some point would have been polite.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I have run across this before, when companies have told me that they hate the GPL because they are not keen on spending a lot of time, energy, and money modifying some piece of code, only to be required to give it to their competitors for free. These discussions were why we put MINIX 3 out under the Berkeley license in 2000 (after prying it loose from my publisher)."
Nowhere does it say that discussions with Intel in particular motivated the license change away from the GPL. Only discussions with unnamed corporations as long ago as 2000.
It makes absolutely no difference whether the "you cost, me profit" corporation was Intel, Nvidia, Acme Inc or all above.
It is interesting to see that Andrew S. Tanenbaum released this letter to the public (probably to show that he was not directly involved in deploying Minix to all those chips), while saying that he is okay with the closed source nature, as long as there are good reasons to do so (to prevent causing any problems for him and for the person who made the decision at Intel). Hey Andrew, if you have no problem with Minix r…
That's an absolute non-sequitur and I think you know that. There is no reason that MINIX could not have been used in the ME even if it were GPLd, for example…
The binary was scrambled. You don't do that if you plan to release the source.
> 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.
The backdoor aspect is true, either from three-letter agencies or for corporate locked-down machines
I’m sure nobody would agree to paying for that, so why on earth does this man feel entitled to give away the product of “our” taxes without any restriction
> when companies have told me that they hate the GPL because they are not keen on spending a lot of time, energy, and money modifying some piece of code, only to be required to give it to their competitors for free Some piece of code that also cost time (and possibly someone's else money) to develop, and that they got for free?
Finally MINIX is more popular that Linux! Never mind that it's being used as a backdoor.
I can't tell if this is earnest or 2nd degree. Can people more familiar with Mr Tanenbaum's style enlighten me? Because if this is earnest I'm quite seriously baffled. I don't mind BSD at all and I won't comment on the political side of things but why on earth would you rejoice that you worked for free (I assume?) for Intel only to have your work end up in some user-hostile module forced on the users? Is Tanenbaum eg…
I read this as, for want of a better word, snarky.
I'd bet if it wasn't Minix, L4 would have been on the cards. That's another microkernel that runs in coprocessors like your phone's radios that probably nobody will ever mention out loud.