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An Open Letter to Intel

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Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#61

Post by lucozade »

simias wrote: post #11

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…

Not sure about earnest but I'd be very surprised if it wasn't sincere.

As to Prof Tanenbaum's style, if I'm feeling a teeny bit uncharitable, I'd say this is perfectly in keeping.

Since the infamous exchange between Linus and him where he came off as being a bit condescending, a lot of his writing on that subject has given the strong impression that he grudgingly accepts that Linux "won" but that it's somewhat of a travesty. And that winning means that it's the OS of choice in billions of devices.

What I read from this statement is that he now feels like it's not so clear cut and he's somewhat vindicated. He's just a bit miffed that no-one told him earlier.

> Is Tanenbaum egotistical enough

I don't think this is ego so much as professional pride. Linux is the architectural antithesis of Minix and that definite rankles. But more positively, he and his students worked hard (and took quite a lot of money) to make Minix 3. He wants it to be used.

I have no idea whether or not he's privately concerned about the way this has been used. But it wouldn't surprise me that he's hopeful that it will raise the profile of Minix and get folk to consider it more seriously.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#62

Post by userbinator »

amelius wrote: post #5
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.

Yes. And it also allows others (e.g. the three-letter agencies) to spy on the user. I wonder how Tanenbaum feels about all that.

I suppose it could be somewhat like a nuclear physicist seeing his work contributing to the development of nuclear weapons.

Although in this case, his opinion of ME seems pretty neutral.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#63

Post by techdragon »

jvdh wrote: post #54
Crontab wrote: post #52

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?

The point of the letter is that there is something as being polite. Intel telling him about it at some point would have been polite.

Especially considering they reached out to him and asked for modifications, such as the #ifdefs which he happily obliged them with.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#64

Post by userbinator »

pulse7 wrote: post #12
amelius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And it also allows others (e.g. the three-letter agencies) to spy on the user. I wonder how Tanenbaum feels about all that.

If Minix's license wouldn't be BSD, they would use some other BSD licensed OS or develop it's own...

Earlier versions of ME (the one with an ARC core) used ThreadX RTOS --- proprietary, commercially licensed. I guess Intel eliminated a huge chunk of those licensing costs by moving to x86+Minix instead.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#65

Post by Fredej »

jvdh wrote: post #20
tarruda wrote: post #4

> 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?

It should be noted that Minix is code that was developed by university researchers. Researchers who are payed for by (primarily) European and Dutch tax euros. Also note that many of that time, energy and money to modify GPL code is not just programming time, but also a lot of legal advice time. With BSD-like license it should be immediately clear what you can do with the code (i.e. almost everything).

This is probably gonna be a controversial view but my experience is this as well: Deploying GPL code is a legal process. Deploying BSD is a development process.

We spent thousands of dollars on legal advice when deploying GPL. In the end it was largely as we expected it to be: No significant action was needed beyond releasing the code to the components that we already got for free, with the minor modifications we had made. But we had to be sure before we committed to using GPL code.

Today, we have a blanket "yes you can" policy for BSD code while GPL is still on a case by case basis.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#66

Post by e3b0c »

tarruda wrote: post #4

> 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?

I've once heard that companies don't like GPL is not because they're afraid of being taken advantage of by their competitors, but they have some secret workarounds/fixes for the hardware defects, which would make them trouble if discovered by their customers.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#67

Post by hawski »

rplnt wrote: post #28

> I guess that makes MINIX the most widely used computer operating system in the world, even more than Windows, Linux, or MacOS. I very much doubt that there's more (modern) Intel CPUs in the wild than there's say android devices (not containing Intel CPUs).

> (...) computer operating system (...)

I guess that by "computer" he means "desktop".

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#68

Post by JepZ »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #35
JepZ wrote: post #26

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…

That whole letter is about how much better the BSD license is than the GPL. If Minux would have been GPLd Intel would have had to open source the ME and therefore didn't use e.g. Linux.

I have not particular Problem with the BSD license (I use it myself sometimes) but give the facts that since years hackers are trying to convince Intel and AMD to relase their ME/PSP source code [1] (to safe us all from deeply infectable hardawre and unrestricted surveillance), I find it disgusting how Tanenbaum uses the situation to drive the discussion towards BSD vs. GPL and how right he was that the BSD provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users.

In my opinion he should have said something like he knows that the BSD license also grants Intel the right to use it for whatever they want, but given the magnitude of the technological impact he supports the public interest to open source the ME and asks AMD to do the same with their PSP.

That way he could have used his role as the Minix inventor for the sake of transparency.

[1] Top question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#69

Post by geocar »

Wintamute wrote: post #13
Radim wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software. Open source can mean complete freedom, including the freedom to take the software, modify it, gain a competitive advantage and generate economic value, according to the license choice of the original author.

> You seem to be having a problem understanding why people would be motivated to release genuinely free software.

Yes, I do have a problem understanding why people work for free.

I don't see cops working for free, or bankers, or chip designers, or the guy who served my dinner working for free. Even Andrew doesn't work for free.

I can understand licensing software that was built or purchased using [socialist] tax dollars under the GPL for moral reasons, but I don't understand why I have to pay Andrew to help Intel maintain their competitive (size) advantage.

Re: An Open Letter to Intel

#70

Post by jwilk »

Bobbleoxs wrote: post #41

What I never understand is under open source license of any sort, do people generally expect credentials? Fame or money or both, do you think you should get at least one? Just a question, no opinion on Mr Tanenbaum's letter per se.

Some do, some don't.

The BSD licence that MINIX 3 uses actually requires giving credit:

Copyright (c) 1987, 1997, 2006, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands All rights reserved. Redistribution and use of the MINIX 3 operating system in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

[...]

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.

[...]

Source: https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...

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