40 ms·

An Open Letter to Intel

996 points by varjag 9y ago

arximboldi 9y ago
> 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.
- amelius 9y ago
  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.
  - pulse7 9y ago
    If Minix's license wouldn't be BSD, they would use some other BSD licensed OS or develop it's own...
    - userbinator 9y ago
      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.
      - mrighele 9y ago
        Which in a way it is better also for end users. At least we don't have to pay the license for a software that we don't want to run on our computer :-)
    - Radim 9y ago
      Does this argument have a name? "If I didn't do [SOME HORRIBLE THING X], someone else would, so I might as well do it myself?" When googling, I only found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/3wclk6/even_if_i_dont_do_it_someone_else_will_does_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/3wclk6/even_...
      - kodablah 9y ago
        Bad phrasing. The argument is more like "If [this awesome thing X] wasn't available, people would have to find a maybe-less-than-desirable alternative." The name for it is practicality.
    - wongarsu 9y ago
      They chose Minix, so it seems reasonable to assume that Minix was the best option. If Minix would not have been BSD, they would have had to choose a worse option or spend significant money to build their own OS. Both options would have cut into ME's budget and might have reduced its capabilities. "If A wouldn't, then B would" is a weird argument imho. It's basically equivalent to saying "If we can't destroy C in one blow, there's no point in attacking them".
      - kodablah 9y ago
        > might have reduced its capabilities And security and many other things. Surely you aren't arguing that an even more closed environment is ideal just because of a minor budget spend for a large company.
  - JepZ 9y ago
    He is so aroused, he doesn't feel much else ;-)
  - userbinator 9y ago
    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.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Does it? I think the DRM aspect is managed somewhere else The backdoor aspect is true, either from three-letter agencies or for corporate locked-down machines
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> 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 case of Intel ME it's not clear who the code is serving, but it's definitely not the person using the computer.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    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.
- ddalex 9y ago
  > to limit what the final user can do with their computer I've never seen a source on the net where anybody claimed that ME limits their work with the computer they own. Any references? ME offers some additional management features at enterprise level, but where does it block things ?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tarruda 9y ago
> 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?
- Radim 9y ago
  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.
  - Buge 9y ago
    He relicensed MINIX for Intel? The letter doesn't say that.
    - Radim 9y ago
      "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)."
      - 0ld 9y ago
        So where exactly does this quote say MINIX was relicensed for Intel? Well, maybe only if you think 17 is "several years": > several years ago when one of your engineering teams contacted me > we put MINIX 3 out under the Berkeley license in 2000
      - Wintamute 9y ago
        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.
remy_luisant 9y ago
Another question is: Does the ME use SQLite? Some other database? If so, how many times is it bundled in there? https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html I wonder how drh would feel about it.
ramshanker 9y ago
The guy missed one hell of a point on his resume for better part of a decade! More than that Personal satisfaction would be unimaginable given the magnitude of deployment.
- mfukar 9y ago
  Yeah, Andrew Fucking Tanenbaum needs to expand his resume.
  - imron 9y ago
    If for nothing else that he now gets bragging rights over Linux
    - mfukar 9y ago
      The bar can literally not go any lower
      - badsectoracula 9y ago
        Of course it can go lower: he gets bragging rights for making the OS that the most widely deployed backdoor runs on - and judging from the linked article, it looks like he already started said bragging :-)
  - ramshanker 9y ago
    Ohh, now that your replied in that tone, I googled him. :) Obviously ammuters with non CS backgrounds can't be expected to know Who-is-Who of CS history. Even if I knew him, how often people explicitly find out the author of the articl? On mobile screen?
    - mcv 9y ago
      I suppose you're right, but he's famous enough that a lot of people in the CS world recognise him by name, by initials, or by url.
simias 9y ago
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 egotistical enough that merely having his work be "the most widely used computer operating system in the world" justifies everything? And then he uses that to argue that BSD is superior to GPL because this way big companies can use the code without giving anything back? Great success.
- jvdh 9y ago
  This is earnest in that he would have liked someone from Intel to tell them. It is completely earnest in the sense that he is not expecting any money from it. Likewise he has never expected anything from Linus Torvald when MINIX was used as the primary source of inspiration for the Linux kernel when he started out with it. Although they did have some pretty serious discussions about it, but nothing more than that.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  It is hard to tell, but I think he might be being ironic.
- avar 9y ago
  Of course it's earnest. If it wasn't he wouldn't have picked the BSD license, which rejects the notion that you're poorer today than yesterday just because someone started using some software you wrote.
  - kunimu 9y ago
    The GPL license does not support that notion either.
  - simias 9y ago
    It's not my point and that's the type of discussion I explicitly tried to avoid. BSD is my go-to license for my own code so I have no prejudice against it. That being said if some company contacted me about some of my code, asked me to do some modifications for free then used it to power a module that many people consider user-hostile and probable backdoor while not giving anything back, be it code, money or credit I don't think I'd write a blog post saying how happy I am that my code is so successful and how it proves that BSD is so much better than GPL. It's one thing to say "the code is BSD, there's nothing wrong about what they did", it's an other thing to say "thank you Mr Intel for using my code without giving anything back, I just wish you had told me earlier so that I could have thanked you before!" which is frankly what this open letter sounds like to me.
mankash666 9y ago
How many non-copyleft mini OSes exist? It's likely that Intel engineers were more familiar with the author's OS given the popularity of his book. All that aside, Intel did exactly what the license allows them to do. The license doesn't require a thank you note. If it makes HN feel any better, Intel is among the leading contributors to Linux, and MANY other open source projects. Intel doesn't expect a thank you note for it
- xfer 9y ago
  Intel contributes to Linux because they have horses in the race, it is not out of charity.
  - 0xFFC 9y ago
    Nothing is out of charity in this world. Not even charity itself.
popee 9y ago
And now I'm happy that Linux won
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Won what? - Being the kernel of ChromeOS and Android, not accessible to majority of userspace and easily replaceable by anything else (e.g. Fuchsia). - Lost to macOS and Windows on the desktop It only won on the server room, and now it runs under Minix supervision.
  - popee 9y ago
    Yes, on servers ;-) EDIT: used and developed by end users made from blood and flesh. On the other hand minix is used and worked on by corporation. So I guess it depends how you look at things
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > and easily replaceable by anything else (e.g. Fuchsia). If it's so easy, why hasn't it happen yet?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Most likely money and drivers. Linux comes mostly for free, Fuchsia is still not mature enough and is 100% on Google's budget. However and this is what I always raise up to people rejoicing about Linux on Android, using official Android images, there is very little Linux exposed to application writers. The Java Frameworks are naturally kernel agnostic, and the NDK APIs are quite constrained, with the main goal of being used to implement Java native methods or bring in C or C++ code into Android. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html Anything else just isn't allowed and might kill the app as of Android 7. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-changes-for-ndk-developers.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-ch... https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/seccomp-filter-in-android-o.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/seccomp-fi... Hence why Termux needs to emulate many Linux behaviors.
mk89 9y ago
This "letter" smells so passive-aggressive... brr...
- cee_el1234 9y ago
  Sarcastic...more like ?
  - mk89 9y ago
    Which is part of being passive-aggressive, together with "resentment, fear of intimacy/competition"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior
    - sgift 9y ago
      Which are all just your interpretation of his post.
      - mk89 9y ago
        Indeed! Which is what sarcasm does :)
- mankash666 9y ago
  Exactly! The TLDR on it is - Intel followed the terms of the BSD license.
  - badsectoracula 9y ago
    Another way to read it is that thanks to the BSD license, Intel got an entire OS for free to use for their backdoor core but that doesn't matter really - the important part is that MINIX is now the most widely used OS in the world :-)
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    BSD Clause 3 requires they give credit.
JohnStrange 9y ago
Can't someone please find and publish a hack that allows anyone to use the Minix for his own purposes? I'd rather have a commercial antivirus vendor control my "machine in the machine" than some arbitrary 3 letter agency from a foreign country.
- Retr0spectrum 9y ago
  https://www.blackhat.com/eu-17/briefings/schedule/#how-to-hack-a-turned-off-computer-or-running-unsigned-code-in-intel-management-engine-8668 https://www.blackhat.com/eu-17/briefings/schedule/#how-to-ha...
JepZ 9y ago
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 running as a spy OS inside everybody's computer, please make that clear and write: "I appreciate Intel's use of my work to potentially backdoor everyone's systems and am proud to have had such a huge impact on the world. If it helps to keep Minix being the most used OS in the world, I hereby grant everybody (not just Intel) to use me and my work without any restriction under the terms of the BSD license."
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  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…
  - phicoh 9y ago
    Given recent discoveries of secret options to disable the ME, I doubt that Intel would picked code where they would be forced to release the source. The binary was scrambled. You don't do that if you plan to release the source.
  - JepZ 9y ago
    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_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...
rplnt 9y ago
> 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).
- hawski 9y ago
  > (...) computer operating system (...) I guess that by "computer" he means "desktop".
  - fnord123 9y ago
    He doesn't know what he means. Linux is deployed on more than 1/cpu through VMs.
    - charonn0 9y ago
      > He doesn't know what he means. I'm pretty sure he does.
      - fnord123 9y ago
        I'm pretty sure if you pressed him on it, he would change goalposts to suit his fantasy.
mtgx 9y ago
> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. Freedom in this case should refer to "freedom what to do with the code" not freedom as in personal liberty, which is what libre/GPL software is usually about. So it's more like how the smartphones OEMs and carriers are "free" to modify and lock-down the Android OS as much as they want.
bartkappenburg 9y ago
From his CV: One of the early users of MINIX was Linus Torvalds. He began modifying MINIX to add new features that he thought were needed. Over a period of time he had modified almost everything and launched it as a new operating system, Linux. It is fairly safe to say that had I not written MINIX there would have been no Linux.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  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.
  - ajsalminen 9y ago
    I think BSD taking the lead once the legal issues were resolved would have been far more likely than Hurd taking the place of Linux.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Torvalds himself seems to have claimed that had Hurd been usable back then, he would never have taken Linux as far as he did. Minix seems to have been barely on his radar, if at all.
    - fermigier 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX#Relationship_with_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX#Relationship_with_Linux The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX greatly influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel.[citation needed] Torvalds used and appreciated MINIX,[17] [...] Early Linux kernel development was done on a MINIX host system, which led to Linux inheriting various features from MINIX, such as the MINIX file system.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        >[citation needed] Hilarious...
Bobbleoxs 9y ago
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.
- jwilk 9y ago
  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/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Exactly, a lot of people think of the BSD license as not reserving any rights, but it actually does reserve a few rights, such as the preservation of the copyright notice. A license that actually reserves no rights would be something like CC0.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - drewbug 9y ago
      Or the WTFPL ;)
rcdwealth 9y ago
I was expecting to see his reaction on privacy issues and maybe to announce the next version to be GPL-ed, but no, he is just asking for "thank you" by Intel. However, it was never their strategy to release out all information hidden deep inside their chip.
Crontab 9y ago
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?
- jvdh 9y ago
  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.
  - techdragon 9y ago
    Especially considering they reached out to him and asked for modifications, such as the #ifdefs which he happily obliged them with.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > Intel telling him about it at some point would have been polite. Intel has paid one billion to AMD to settle a law suit. I wouldn't expect a company which doesn't refrain from illegal activities to be polite.
eecc 9y ago
Well, if Minix was developed on NL and EU taxpayer dime it’s quite disconcerting that it’s now being used to potentially bug the computers of those same taxpayers. 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
- boomlinde 9y ago
  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). Ideally, bugging computers is a legislative issue, and the contract between the vendor of the particular technology employed to do it (in this case not even particularly built for that purpose) and its user is irrelevant.
  - eecc 9y ago
    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 potentially used against us, citizens.
    - boomlinde 9y ago
      Looking at MINIX as "surveillace technology" or "intended for misuse" (isn't that an oxymoron?) is stretching the definition very inclusively – it's an operating system. Yes, people that use computers for bad things sometimes use operating systems to facilitate those bad things. Whether you buy a license for Microsoft Bob or use MINIX for free is beside the point. 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.
gtrubetskoy 9y ago
All Dr. Tanenbaum is saying is that it would have been the classy thing to let him know, nothing more. Professor Tanenbaum is one of the most respected computer scientists alive, 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. That is his only (and quite fair) point.
- jhasse 9y ago
  > 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 worked out, he should have chosen a different license. For example the MIT license requires the copyright and license to be included in distributions.
  - varjag 9y ago
    BSD 3-clause license requires that as well.
  - rahiel 9y ago
    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/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...
    - mtgx 9y ago
      So could he sue Intel for about a billion dollars now? Also, my guess is this is part "security through obscurity", part Intel not wanting everyone to know that they used someone else's code for its chips' firmware.
dep_b 9y ago
For a while I sometimes had a thought if it were possible to put the OS completely in EFI and run an application completely in cache since both types of memory are quite big now. I mean I used to run Windows 95 with 8MB of RAM, Linux with 1MB, while a Xeon already has 16MB of cache. That should be one hell of a fast computer
therealmarv 9y ago
nah, Linus Torvalds wins. I really really doubt that Minix is more deployed than Linux... just think of three examples (and there are probably many more examples): * Linux in all variants running in billions of VMs and Containers. * Android. * There are not only Intel chips out there. So Kudos to Dr. Tanenbaum but adding all numbers I don't think we have Minix nearly as much deployed as Linux ;)
- pjmlp 9y ago
  When Fuchsia gets more mature you can eventually remove Android from that list. The stable NDK APIs are not Linux specific, ANSI C and C++ libraries are OS agnostic, and as of Android 8 the syscalls are white listed.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Let's wait and see. When that happens Intel might as well have replaced MINIX in the ME.
  - josteink 9y ago
    > When Fuchsia gets more mature you can eventually remove Android from that list. And Android can finally throw out its biggest chunk of meaningfully open-source source-code so far (from an end-user/modder perspective). At that point Android is not going to be meaningfully open any more, and might as well be considered a closed platform on par with iOS. I wonder how/if that will impact the platforms popularity.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      Fuchsia is open source [1] [2] though not specifically GPL. It uses a myriad of licenses. > I wonder how/if that will impact the platforms popularity. It won't. Vast majority of users don't care about open source, and developers won't have to care. The kernel and userland get replaced, but the underlying Android OS (excluding GApps) remains open source. [1] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia
rbanffy 9y ago
> 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. There are already a lot of blobs that aren't audited by anyone outside their manufacturers running a lot of basic functionality on my computers. I don't need another blob running on god mode on my CPUs. So, no. The use of the BSD license here is harming everyone but Intel. Hopefully, we can make it harm Intel if we make it clear (with our purchasing power) it is not cool to force us to run software we don't trust. It only serves to show that the BSD license preserves the freedom of the developers and packagers AT THE EXPENSE of the users.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  This is why the GPL is so great IMO. It would force Intel to either release the source code or use something else.
  - josteink 9y ago
    It would also force Intel to give us a means to replace ME with something else which ultimately puts the user in control.
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      Only the GPLv3 would force Intel to do that. With v2 they can go the TiVo route and make the source available without giving out the means to make the hardware run your own binaries.
      - colejohnson66 9y ago
        Which means they could’ve used Linux if they wanted to
throwaway246810 9y ago
CVE-2017-5689 revealed that the AMT would _accept an empty password, allowing full remote code execution_. Tanenbaum portrays his BSD-licensed OS underlying this junk as a demonstration of "the maximum amount of freedom", and his only concern is that he would have liked to have known how popular this OS is now. If there was ever an example as to programmers being completely oblivious as to the ramifications of distributing their creations, this is it.
- abiox 9y ago
  i'm not sure what your point is, exactly. do you imagine that if only minix didn't exist, this would never have happened?
signa11 9y ago
the real danger (if you can call it that) now is that, this codebase will start attracting a disproportionate number of eyeballs from security researchers to blackhats etc. everyone wants their hands on that always-on backdoor embedded in the vast majority of modern machines. <shudder>
signa11 9y ago
is it just me, or other folks here as well, also got the inkling that this was just a veiled gloat ? not so sure if being complicit in intel's ME racket is such a great honor...
josteink 9y ago
> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. The Berkeley license gives software publishers (which are not users) maximum amount of freedom. As an actual X86 user who cannot remove or change this unwanted piece of code running on my machine, I politely disagree about the freedom given to me.
- ddalex 9y ago
  Intel is the user of the software here, not yourself.
- bm1362 9y ago
  It sounds like there might be a (very tiny) market for an entirely audited GPL stack. Intel made a sound, responsible decision for everyone involved except the privacy crowd.
Tistel 9y ago
competition keeps the herd healthy. Somebody should make an ARM laptop/desktop that is not riddled with three letter government agency spyware (a ring -3 web server! Hidden from the person who bought the CPU! Did I say you could do that? Unbelievable). Also, from a basic CS standpoint, having a whole CPU being wasted is inefficent.
- drewbug 9y ago
  > Somebody should make an ARM laptop/desktop that is not riddled with three letter government agency spyware https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/c201.html https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/c201.html
_pmf_ 9y ago
That's a commendable level of passive-aggressiveness, but the whole affair warrants it. I think it would have been for Intel's and the general public's benefit (given the impact of potential issues) if there had been some cooperation with Tanenbaum himself.
yohann305 9y ago
what a nice guy this Dr Tanenbaum is. I don't know him, I wish i did
maxpert 9y ago
I expected more intellectual letter from Tanenbaum. And I don’t know why they myth of intel CPUs more than ARM CPUs is getting so much traction I don’t think its true.
zeveb 9y ago
> 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. Nonsense; the GPL does not require that one's competitors receive code, but rather one's users. It further requires that one may not prevent them from giving the code to others, with the same rights. Thanks to the BSD, Intel's users are unable to patch, modify or extend the hardware & software they have bought. > If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. I think that I've demonstrated that the freedom has not accrued to users but rather to Intel.
- ctw 9y ago
  > Nonsense; the GPL does not require that one's competitors receive code, but rather one's users. What's stopping an Intel competitor from also being a user? Am I wrong that all it would take is for an Intel competitor to buy an x86 computer with an Intel processor and then demand the source code? If that's the case, then it hardly seems like nonsense to me.
youdontknowtho 9y ago
Does anybody remember the other x86 competitor of the 90's Cyrix? (Is that the name?) What happened to them. Is there anyone out there with an x86 IP license that could build a super simple P3 or P4 class chip?
- brohee 9y ago
  The Cyrix x86 IP was bought by VIA (by way of National Semiconductor), which still makes low power x86 CPU, often found in SFF, low power PC.
  - youdontknowtho 9y ago
    seems like they could produce an eight core P4 equivalent without ME.
mdemare 9y ago
Incidentally, ast also runs http://electoral-vote.com/ http://electoral-vote.com/, since the 2004 elections. Posts marked (V) are by him.
andromaton 9y ago
The open letter is not about licensing or private attribution. It's the slowest come back I've ever seen. In 1992, Tanenbaum wrote "LINUX is obsolete". Linus and Tanenbaum docked it out about microkernels. Linux became very widely used. Intel secretly made Minix even more so. Linus eyes must be rolling.
noncoml 9y ago
Wow. So he is super happy that his work is now more “widely used” than Linux, and only butthurt about not getting enough recognition? No word about the elephant in the room?
mmcclellan 9y ago
I first heard the Minix thing in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo which I found, I think via a HN thread. Anyway, most of the articles rehash this talk and IMO its a solid 30 minute investment.
Vektorweg 9y ago
The modern conception of economic competition is disturbing.
g051051 9y ago
From the Network World report: > If you have a modern Intel CPU (released in the last few years) with Intel’s Management Engine built in, you’ve got another complete operating system running that you might not have had any clue was in there: MINIX. That's different from Mr. Tannenbaum's claim: > Thanks for putting a version of MINIX 3 inside the ME-11 management engine chip used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world. What about all of the AMD system, or the systems that were built before IME 11 (or that just don't have it)?
- abiox 9y ago
  what about them? i'm not sure what you're question is getting at.
  - g051051 9y ago
    I dispute the claim: "ME-11 management engine chip [is] used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world". AMD chips are popular in both consumer and business applications...there's no way that whatever fraction of chipsets Intel delivers are "almost all". Furthermore, Intel's documentation seems to state that this is a chipset feature, not a processor feature: > Currently, we support the following chipsets regardless of your system manufacturer or the motherboard in your PC: > Intel® Q57/H57/H55/P55 Express Chipset > Mobile Intel® QM57/QS57/HM57/HM55/PM55 Express Chipsets The wording is sufficiently vague that I can't be 100% sure about it.
infinity0 9y ago
> this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. I find it incredible how ~ast can consider the intel ME to be achieving "the maximum amount of freedom" to potential users. He even criticises it in the very next paragraph. More generally, I find it incredible how people can view the attempts (by copyleft) to restrict the freedom to restrict others, as attacks on freedom.
mcguire 9y ago
I am saddened that Tannenbaum's only comment about the existence and purpose of the Management Engine is in a postscript, and a very weak one at that: "Many people (including me) don't like the idea of an all-powerful management engine in there at all (since it is a possible security hole and a dangerous idea in the first place), but that is Intel's business decision and a separate issue from the code it runs."
mr_isomies 9y ago
We're talking about the granddaddy of click-bait here. I think that the only genuine thing about him is the bitter impression that he never got his due From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: LINUX is obsolete Date: 29 Jan 92 12:12:50 GMT http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html
krylon 9y ago
Has Intel responded to this in any way? Ever since I first heard of the Management Engine, and of the various problems this thing raises, I found it curious that Intel remained so quiet about it. I can think of two plausible explanations: a) They do not want to draw any more attention to this issue and are pulling a "reverse Streisand", if you will. If so, there could be several reasons for them to act this way. Or, b), they just don't care enough.
sixdimensional 9y ago
This brings a nice context to the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" [1]. Who's the giant, in reality? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of...
antirez 9y ago
I'm very skeptic about people saying that with GPL things would go differently. I see it more real world that Intel would either pick something else and inferior, or rewrite it from scratch producing some kind of internal corporate little monster. Result: a very widely distributed product would be worse, developers working at Intel having to deal with some only-internal project without outside applications or interest, and so forth. Now at least they: 1) Work at an open code. 2) May contribute fixes in the future. 3) Developers can use the experience to use the same code base elsewhere in the future. 4) Who joins and knows Minix can be productive faster without learning something internally produced. BSD sounds like a license that allows companies to steal value, but in that case it only improves the global outcome. On the other side BSD is a bit of a real problem in the cloud because it limits two of the most important business models of OSS code: services and products, but only in case of software you sell as-a-service.
thrillgore 9y ago
He's gloating over a significant security flaw baked into Intel hardware.
- nacs 9y ago
  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.
  - thrillgore 9y ago
    I think i'd word my statements better if my software was involved in a big security exploit, just to totally cover my ass now that the pentesters are going to hammer my kernel.
znpy 9y ago
I think it's foolish of Mr Tanenbaum to expect how Intel used Minix in their super-secret project. I mean, it's super-secret. Telling him "Congratulation, Minix is now the most widely used OS in every x86 pc, but we cannot tell you why and how" would have blown pretty much everything. Any average person would have done 2+2 and would have understood what was going on. Beside this... I think it is important that this would not have happened if Minix was licensed under the GPL. Not this way, at least. Intel would have had to find another OS (possibly paying for it) or develop one ex-novo (again, paying for it). So it would have happened anyway, but at least it would have been much more expensive for Intel.
ajnin 9y ago
> These discussions were why we put MINIX 3 out under the Berkeley license in 2000 Is he implying that he chose that license specifically because Intel asked for it ? He claims that that license is the most user-friendly since it gives the user the most freedom, which is true in that case, but he's missing the point, when the FSF and other GPL proponents mention user freedom they talk about the end user freedom, the one at the end of the chain that will have to use the software (i.e. anyone who purchased a semi-recent Intel chip). When considering the user community as a whole, it is clear that they globally get less value from the project since changes don't have to (and don't) get contributed back and they can't make changes to the software that they are using. Seems very short-sighted to claim a win here when the only 2 parties that benefit are Intel and Tanenbaum's ego.
bm1362 9y ago
For anyone unfamiliar with Minix, it appears to be a tiny OS: > MINIX 3 is a free, open-source, operating system designed to be highly reliable, flexible, and secure. It is based on a tiny microkernel running in kernel mode with the rest of the operating system running as a number of isolated, protected, processes in user mode. It runs on x86 and ARM CPUs, is compatible with NetBSD, and runs thousands of NetBSD packages.[1] Something about this [2] made me feel bad for the author, I can't imagine building software for a few decades, getting excited about a conference and then no one submitting any papers. [1] http://www.minix3.org/ http://www.minix3.org/ [2] > Unfortunately, the MINIXCon 2017 conference had to be cancelled due to the small number of talks submitted
dbolgheroni 9y ago
A lot of comments seems to converge on a license flamewar, almost blaming the choice of MINIX on using a permissive license like the BSD. It is not a license problem. Nor Mr. Tanenbaum position on "being glad" of MINIX being used on billions of x86 computers. Intel hiding code on all chips is the problem. Intel opening backdoors (maybe not intentionally, due to bugs) is the problem. Not being able to easily disable or update this code is the problem. If it wasn't the MINIX, Intel would use something else. If there wasn't, they would write their own OS for it.
xmatos 9y ago
Like it or not, that enforces the beauty of GPL. I'm positively sure, if it wasn't it, linux wouldn't be in its position today. I actually prefer the LGPL, as it doesnt spread through, or "contaminate", the rest of your code base.
neelkadia 9y ago
We need bring your own processor tech now.
brianon99 9y ago
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.

996 points by varjag 9y ago

> 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.

amelius 9y ago
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.
- pulse7 9y ago
  If Minix's license wouldn't be BSD, they would use some other BSD licensed OS or develop it's own...
  - userbinator 9y ago
    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.
    - mrighele 9y ago
      Which in a way it is better also for end users. At least we don't have to pay the license for a software that we don't want to run on our computer :-)
  - Radim 9y ago
    Does this argument have a name? "If I didn't do [SOME HORRIBLE THING X], someone else would, so I might as well do it myself?" When googling, I only found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/3wclk6/even_if_i_dont_do_it_someone_else_will_does_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/3wclk6/even_...
    - kodablah 9y ago
      Bad phrasing. The argument is more like "If [this awesome thing X] wasn't available, people would have to find a maybe-less-than-desirable alternative." The name for it is practicality.
  - wongarsu 9y ago
    They chose Minix, so it seems reasonable to assume that Minix was the best option. If Minix would not have been BSD, they would have had to choose a worse option or spend significant money to build their own OS. Both options would have cut into ME's budget and might have reduced its capabilities. "If A wouldn't, then B would" is a weird argument imho. It's basically equivalent to saying "If we can't destroy C in one blow, there's no point in attacking them".
    - kodablah 9y ago
      > might have reduced its capabilities And security and many other things. Surely you aren't arguing that an even more closed environment is ideal just because of a minor budget spend for a large company.
- JepZ 9y ago
  He is so aroused, he doesn't feel much else ;-)
- userbinator 9y ago
  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.
raverbashing 9y ago
Does it? I think the DRM aspect is managed somewhere else The backdoor aspect is true, either from three-letter agencies or for corporate locked-down machines
phkahler 9y ago
>> 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 case of Intel ME it's not clear who the code is serving, but it's definitely not the person using the computer.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  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.
ddalex 9y ago
> to limit what the final user can do with their computer I've never seen a source on the net where anybody claimed that ME limits their work with the computer they own. Any references? ME offers some additional management features at enterprise level, but where does it block things ?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tarruda 9y ago

> 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?

Radim 9y ago
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.
- Buge 9y ago
  He relicensed MINIX for Intel? The letter doesn't say that.
  - Radim 9y ago
    "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)."
    - 0ld 9y ago
      So where exactly does this quote say MINIX was relicensed for Intel? Well, maybe only if you think 17 is "several years": > several years ago when one of your engineering teams contacted me > we put MINIX 3 out under the Berkeley license in 2000
    - Wintamute 9y ago
      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.

remy_luisant 9y ago

Another question is: Does the ME use SQLite? Some other database? If so, how many times is it bundled in there? https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html I wonder how drh would feel about it.

ramshanker 9y ago

The guy missed one hell of a point on his resume for better part of a decade! More than that Personal satisfaction would be unimaginable given the magnitude of deployment.

mfukar 9y ago
Yeah, Andrew Fucking Tanenbaum needs to expand his resume.
- imron 9y ago
  If for nothing else that he now gets bragging rights over Linux
  - mfukar 9y ago
    The bar can literally not go any lower
    - badsectoracula 9y ago
      Of course it can go lower: he gets bragging rights for making the OS that the most widely deployed backdoor runs on - and judging from the linked article, it looks like he already started said bragging :-)
- ramshanker 9y ago
  Ohh, now that your replied in that tone, I googled him. :) Obviously ammuters with non CS backgrounds can't be expected to know Who-is-Who of CS history. Even if I knew him, how often people explicitly find out the author of the articl? On mobile screen?
  - mcv 9y ago
    I suppose you're right, but he's famous enough that a lot of people in the CS world recognise him by name, by initials, or by url.

simias 9y ago

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 egotistical enough that merely having his work be "the most widely used computer operating system in the world" justifies everything? And then he uses that to argue that BSD is superior to GPL because this way big companies can use the code without giving anything back? Great success.

jvdh 9y ago
This is earnest in that he would have liked someone from Intel to tell them. It is completely earnest in the sense that he is not expecting any money from it. Likewise he has never expected anything from Linus Torvald when MINIX was used as the primary source of inspiration for the Linux kernel when he started out with it. Although they did have some pretty serious discussions about it, but nothing more than that.
pjmlp 9y ago
It is hard to tell, but I think he might be being ironic.
avar 9y ago
Of course it's earnest. If it wasn't he wouldn't have picked the BSD license, which rejects the notion that you're poorer today than yesterday just because someone started using some software you wrote.
- kunimu 9y ago
  The GPL license does not support that notion either.
- simias 9y ago
  It's not my point and that's the type of discussion I explicitly tried to avoid. BSD is my go-to license for my own code so I have no prejudice against it. That being said if some company contacted me about some of my code, asked me to do some modifications for free then used it to power a module that many people consider user-hostile and probable backdoor while not giving anything back, be it code, money or credit I don't think I'd write a blog post saying how happy I am that my code is so successful and how it proves that BSD is so much better than GPL. It's one thing to say "the code is BSD, there's nothing wrong about what they did", it's an other thing to say "thank you Mr Intel for using my code without giving anything back, I just wish you had told me earlier so that I could have thanked you before!" which is frankly what this open letter sounds like to me.

mankash666 9y ago

How many non-copyleft mini OSes exist? It's likely that Intel engineers were more familiar with the author's OS given the popularity of his book. All that aside, Intel did exactly what the license allows them to do. The license doesn't require a thank you note. If it makes HN feel any better, Intel is among the leading contributors to Linux, and MANY other open source projects. Intel doesn't expect a thank you note for it

xfer 9y ago
Intel contributes to Linux because they have horses in the race, it is not out of charity.
- 0xFFC 9y ago
  Nothing is out of charity in this world. Not even charity itself.

popee 9y ago

And now I'm happy that Linux won

pjmlp 9y ago
Won what? - Being the kernel of ChromeOS and Android, not accessible to majority of userspace and easily replaceable by anything else (e.g. Fuchsia). - Lost to macOS and Windows on the desktop It only won on the server room, and now it runs under Minix supervision.
- popee 9y ago
  Yes, on servers ;-) EDIT: used and developed by end users made from blood and flesh. On the other hand minix is used and worked on by corporation. So I guess it depends how you look at things
- jhasse 9y ago
  > and easily replaceable by anything else (e.g. Fuchsia). If it's so easy, why hasn't it happen yet?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Most likely money and drivers. Linux comes mostly for free, Fuchsia is still not mature enough and is 100% on Google's budget. However and this is what I always raise up to people rejoicing about Linux on Android, using official Android images, there is very little Linux exposed to application writers. The Java Frameworks are naturally kernel agnostic, and the NDK APIs are quite constrained, with the main goal of being used to implement Java native methods or bring in C or C++ code into Android. https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html Anything else just isn't allowed and might kill the app as of Android 7. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-changes-for-ndk-developers.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-ch... https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/seccomp-filter-in-android-o.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/07/seccomp-fi... Hence why Termux needs to emulate many Linux behaviors.

mk89 9y ago

This "letter" smells so passive-aggressive... brr...

cee_el1234 9y ago
Sarcastic...more like ?
- mk89 9y ago
  Which is part of being passive-aggressive, together with "resentment, fear of intimacy/competition"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive_behavior
  - sgift 9y ago
    Which are all just your interpretation of his post.
    - mk89 9y ago
      Indeed! Which is what sarcasm does :)
mankash666 9y ago
Exactly! The TLDR on it is - Intel followed the terms of the BSD license.
- badsectoracula 9y ago
  Another way to read it is that thanks to the BSD license, Intel got an entire OS for free to use for their backdoor core but that doesn't matter really - the important part is that MINIX is now the most widely used OS in the world :-)
- Fnoord 9y ago
  BSD Clause 3 requires they give credit.

JohnStrange 9y ago

Can't someone please find and publish a hack that allows anyone to use the Minix for his own purposes? I'd rather have a commercial antivirus vendor control my "machine in the machine" than some arbitrary 3 letter agency from a foreign country.

Retr0spectrum 9y ago
https://www.blackhat.com/eu-17/briefings/schedule/#how-to-hack-a-turned-off-computer-or-running-unsigned-code-in-intel-management-engine-8668 https://www.blackhat.com/eu-17/briefings/schedule/#how-to-ha...

JepZ 9y ago

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 running as a spy OS inside everybody's computer, please make that clear and write: "I appreciate Intel's use of my work to potentially backdoor everyone's systems and am proud to have had such a huge impact on the world. If it helps to keep Minix being the most used OS in the world, I hereby grant everybody (not just Intel) to use me and my work without any restriction under the terms of the BSD license."

matthewmacleod 9y ago
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…
- phicoh 9y ago
  Given recent discoveries of secret options to disable the ME, I doubt that Intel would picked code where they would be forced to release the source. The binary was scrambled. You don't do that if you plan to release the source.
- JepZ 9y ago
  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_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_crea...

rplnt 9y ago

> 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).

hawski 9y ago
> (...) computer operating system (...) I guess that by "computer" he means "desktop".
- fnord123 9y ago
  He doesn't know what he means. Linux is deployed on more than 1/cpu through VMs.
  - charonn0 9y ago
    > He doesn't know what he means. I'm pretty sure he does.
    - fnord123 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure if you pressed him on it, he would change goalposts to suit his fantasy.

mtgx 9y ago

> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. Freedom in this case should refer to "freedom what to do with the code" not freedom as in personal liberty, which is what libre/GPL software is usually about. So it's more like how the smartphones OEMs and carriers are "free" to modify and lock-down the Android OS as much as they want.

bartkappenburg 9y ago

From his CV: One of the early users of MINIX was Linus Torvalds. He began modifying MINIX to add new features that he thought were needed. Over a period of time he had modified almost everything and launched it as a new operating system, Linux. It is fairly safe to say that had I not written MINIX there would have been no Linux.

ekianjo 9y ago
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.
- ajsalminen 9y ago
  I think BSD taking the lead once the legal issues were resolved would have been far more likely than Hurd taking the place of Linux.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Torvalds himself seems to have claimed that had Hurd been usable back then, he would never have taken Linux as far as he did. Minix seems to have been barely on his radar, if at all.
  - fermigier 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX#Relationship_with_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX#Relationship_with_Linux The design principles Tanenbaum applied to MINIX greatly influenced the design decisions Linus Torvalds applied in the creation of the Linux kernel.[citation needed] Torvalds used and appreciated MINIX,[17] [...] Early Linux kernel development was done on a MINIX host system, which led to Linux inheriting various features from MINIX, such as the MINIX file system.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      >[citation needed] Hilarious...

Bobbleoxs 9y ago

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.

jwilk 9y ago
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/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Exactly, a lot of people think of the BSD license as not reserving any rights, but it actually does reserve a few rights, such as the preservation of the copyright notice. A license that actually reserves no rights would be something like CC0.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - drewbug 9y ago
    Or the WTFPL ;)

rcdwealth 9y ago

I was expecting to see his reaction on privacy issues and maybe to announce the next version to be GPL-ed, but no, he is just asking for "thank you" by Intel. However, it was never their strategy to release out all information hidden deep inside their chip.

Crontab 9y ago

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?

jvdh 9y ago
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.
- techdragon 9y ago
  Especially considering they reached out to him and asked for modifications, such as the #ifdefs which he happily obliged them with.
- jhasse 9y ago
  > Intel telling him about it at some point would have been polite. Intel has paid one billion to AMD to settle a law suit. I wouldn't expect a company which doesn't refrain from illegal activities to be polite.

eecc 9y ago

Well, if Minix was developed on NL and EU taxpayer dime it’s quite disconcerting that it’s now being used to potentially bug the computers of those same taxpayers. 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

boomlinde 9y ago
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). Ideally, bugging computers is a legislative issue, and the contract between the vendor of the particular technology employed to do it (in this case not even particularly built for that purpose) and its user is irrelevant.
- eecc 9y ago
  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 potentially used against us, citizens.
  - boomlinde 9y ago
    Looking at MINIX as "surveillace technology" or "intended for misuse" (isn't that an oxymoron?) is stretching the definition very inclusively – it's an operating system. Yes, people that use computers for bad things sometimes use operating systems to facilitate those bad things. Whether you buy a license for Microsoft Bob or use MINIX for free is beside the point. 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.

gtrubetskoy 9y ago

All Dr. Tanenbaum is saying is that it would have been the classy thing to let him know, nothing more. Professor Tanenbaum is one of the most respected computer scientists alive, 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. That is his only (and quite fair) point.

jhasse 9y ago
> 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 worked out, he should have chosen a different license. For example the MIT license requires the copyright and license to be included in distributions.
- varjag 9y ago
  BSD 3-clause license requires that as well.
- rahiel 9y ago
  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/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix...
  - mtgx 9y ago
    So could he sue Intel for about a billion dollars now? Also, my guess is this is part "security through obscurity", part Intel not wanting everyone to know that they used someone else's code for its chips' firmware.

dep_b 9y ago

For a while I sometimes had a thought if it were possible to put the OS completely in EFI and run an application completely in cache since both types of memory are quite big now. I mean I used to run Windows 95 with 8MB of RAM, Linux with 1MB, while a Xeon already has 16MB of cache. That should be one hell of a fast computer

therealmarv 9y ago

nah, Linus Torvalds wins. I really really doubt that Minix is more deployed than Linux... just think of three examples (and there are probably many more examples): * Linux in all variants running in billions of VMs and Containers. * Android. * There are not only Intel chips out there. So Kudos to Dr. Tanenbaum but adding all numbers I don't think we have Minix nearly as much deployed as Linux ;)

pjmlp 9y ago
When Fuchsia gets more mature you can eventually remove Android from that list. The stable NDK APIs are not Linux specific, ANSI C and C++ libraries are OS agnostic, and as of Android 8 the syscalls are white listed.
- jhasse 9y ago
  Let's wait and see. When that happens Intel might as well have replaced MINIX in the ME.
- josteink 9y ago
  > When Fuchsia gets more mature you can eventually remove Android from that list. And Android can finally throw out its biggest chunk of meaningfully open-source source-code so far (from an end-user/modder perspective). At that point Android is not going to be meaningfully open any more, and might as well be considered a closed platform on par with iOS. I wonder how/if that will impact the platforms popularity.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    Fuchsia is open source [1] [2] though not specifically GPL. It uses a myriad of licenses. > I wonder how/if that will impact the platforms popularity. It won't. Vast majority of users don't care about open source, and developers won't have to care. The kernel and userland get replaced, but the underlying Android OS (excluding GApps) remains open source. [1] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia

rbanffy 9y ago

> 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. There are already a lot of blobs that aren't audited by anyone outside their manufacturers running a lot of basic functionality on my computers. I don't need another blob running on god mode on my CPUs. So, no. The use of the BSD license here is harming everyone but Intel. Hopefully, we can make it harm Intel if we make it clear (with our purchasing power) it is not cool to force us to run software we don't trust. It only serves to show that the BSD license preserves the freedom of the developers and packagers AT THE EXPENSE of the users.

colejohnson66 9y ago
This is why the GPL is so great IMO. It would force Intel to either release the source code or use something else.
- josteink 9y ago
  It would also force Intel to give us a means to replace ME with something else which ultimately puts the user in control.
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    Only the GPLv3 would force Intel to do that. With v2 they can go the TiVo route and make the source available without giving out the means to make the hardware run your own binaries.
    - colejohnson66 9y ago
      Which means they could’ve used Linux if they wanted to

throwaway246810 9y ago

CVE-2017-5689 revealed that the AMT would _accept an empty password, allowing full remote code execution_. Tanenbaum portrays his BSD-licensed OS underlying this junk as a demonstration of "the maximum amount of freedom", and his only concern is that he would have liked to have known how popular this OS is now. If there was ever an example as to programmers being completely oblivious as to the ramifications of distributing their creations, this is it.

abiox 9y ago
i'm not sure what your point is, exactly. do you imagine that if only minix didn't exist, this would never have happened?

signa11 9y ago

the real danger (if you can call it that) now is that, this codebase will start attracting a disproportionate number of eyeballs from security researchers to blackhats etc. everyone wants their hands on that always-on backdoor embedded in the vast majority of modern machines. <shudder>

signa11 9y ago

is it just me, or other folks here as well, also got the inkling that this was just a veiled gloat ? not so sure if being complicit in intel's ME racket is such a great honor...

josteink 9y ago

> If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. The Berkeley license gives software publishers (which are not users) maximum amount of freedom. As an actual X86 user who cannot remove or change this unwanted piece of code running on my machine, I politely disagree about the freedom given to me.

ddalex 9y ago
Intel is the user of the software here, not yourself.
bm1362 9y ago
It sounds like there might be a (very tiny) market for an entirely audited GPL stack. Intel made a sound, responsible decision for everyone involved except the privacy crowd.

Tistel 9y ago

competition keeps the herd healthy. Somebody should make an ARM laptop/desktop that is not riddled with three letter government agency spyware (a ring -3 web server! Hidden from the person who bought the CPU! Did I say you could do that? Unbelievable). Also, from a basic CS standpoint, having a whole CPU being wasted is inefficent.

drewbug 9y ago
> Somebody should make an ARM laptop/desktop that is not riddled with three letter government agency spyware https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/c201.html https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/c201.html

_pmf_ 9y ago

That's a commendable level of passive-aggressiveness, but the whole affair warrants it. I think it would have been for Intel's and the general public's benefit (given the impact of potential issues) if there had been some cooperation with Tanenbaum himself.

yohann305 9y ago

what a nice guy this Dr Tanenbaum is. I don't know him, I wish i did

maxpert 9y ago

I expected more intellectual letter from Tanenbaum. And I don’t know why they myth of intel CPUs more than ARM CPUs is getting so much traction I don’t think its true.

zeveb 9y ago

> 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. Nonsense; the GPL does not require that one's competitors receive code, but rather one's users. It further requires that one may not prevent them from giving the code to others, with the same rights. Thanks to the BSD, Intel's users are unable to patch, modify or extend the hardware & software they have bought. > If nothing else, this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. I think that I've demonstrated that the freedom has not accrued to users but rather to Intel.

ctw 9y ago
> Nonsense; the GPL does not require that one's competitors receive code, but rather one's users. What's stopping an Intel competitor from also being a user? Am I wrong that all it would take is for an Intel competitor to buy an x86 computer with an Intel processor and then demand the source code? If that's the case, then it hardly seems like nonsense to me.

youdontknowtho 9y ago

Does anybody remember the other x86 competitor of the 90's Cyrix? (Is that the name?) What happened to them. Is there anyone out there with an x86 IP license that could build a super simple P3 or P4 class chip?

brohee 9y ago
The Cyrix x86 IP was bought by VIA (by way of National Semiconductor), which still makes low power x86 CPU, often found in SFF, low power PC.
- youdontknowtho 9y ago
  seems like they could produce an eight core P4 equivalent without ME.

mdemare 9y ago

Incidentally, ast also runs http://electoral-vote.com/ http://electoral-vote.com/, since the 2004 elections. Posts marked (V) are by him.

andromaton 9y ago

The open letter is not about licensing or private attribution. It's the slowest come back I've ever seen. In 1992, Tanenbaum wrote "LINUX is obsolete". Linus and Tanenbaum docked it out about microkernels. Linux became very widely used. Intel secretly made Minix even more so. Linus eyes must be rolling.

noncoml 9y ago

Wow. So he is super happy that his work is now more “widely used” than Linux, and only butthurt about not getting enough recognition? No word about the elephant in the room?

mmcclellan 9y ago

I first heard the Minix thing in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo which I found, I think via a HN thread. Anyway, most of the articles rehash this talk and IMO its a solid 30 minute investment.

Vektorweg 9y ago

The modern conception of economic competition is disturbing.

g051051 9y ago

From the Network World report: > If you have a modern Intel CPU (released in the last few years) with Intel’s Management Engine built in, you’ve got another complete operating system running that you might not have had any clue was in there: MINIX. That's different from Mr. Tannenbaum's claim: > Thanks for putting a version of MINIX 3 inside the ME-11 management engine chip used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world. What about all of the AMD system, or the systems that were built before IME 11 (or that just don't have it)?

abiox 9y ago
what about them? i'm not sure what you're question is getting at.
- g051051 9y ago
  I dispute the claim: "ME-11 management engine chip [is] used on almost all recent desktop and laptop computers in the world". AMD chips are popular in both consumer and business applications...there's no way that whatever fraction of chipsets Intel delivers are "almost all". Furthermore, Intel's documentation seems to state that this is a chipset feature, not a processor feature: > Currently, we support the following chipsets regardless of your system manufacturer or the motherboard in your PC: > Intel® Q57/H57/H55/P55 Express Chipset > Mobile Intel® QM57/QS57/HM57/HM55/PM55 Express Chipsets The wording is sufficiently vague that I can't be 100% sure about it.

infinity0 9y ago

> this bit of news reaffirms my view that the Berkeley license provides the maximum amount of freedom to potential users. I find it incredible how ~ast can consider the intel ME to be achieving "the maximum amount of freedom" to potential users. He even criticises it in the very next paragraph. More generally, I find it incredible how people can view the attempts (by copyleft) to restrict the freedom to restrict others, as attacks on freedom.

mcguire 9y ago

I am saddened that Tannenbaum's only comment about the existence and purpose of the Management Engine is in a postscript, and a very weak one at that: "Many people (including me) don't like the idea of an all-powerful management engine in there at all (since it is a possible security hole and a dangerous idea in the first place), but that is Intel's business decision and a separate issue from the code it runs."

mr_isomies 9y ago

We're talking about the granddaddy of click-bait here. I think that the only genuine thing about him is the bitter impression that he never got his due From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: LINUX is obsolete Date: 29 Jan 92 12:12:50 GMT http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html

krylon 9y ago

Has Intel responded to this in any way? Ever since I first heard of the Management Engine, and of the various problems this thing raises, I found it curious that Intel remained so quiet about it. I can think of two plausible explanations: a) They do not want to draw any more attention to this issue and are pulling a "reverse Streisand", if you will. If so, there could be several reasons for them to act this way. Or, b), they just don't care enough.

sixdimensional 9y ago

This brings a nice context to the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" [1]. Who's the giant, in reality? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of...

antirez 9y ago

I'm very skeptic about people saying that with GPL things would go differently. I see it more real world that Intel would either pick something else and inferior, or rewrite it from scratch producing some kind of internal corporate little monster. Result: a very widely distributed product would be worse, developers working at Intel having to deal with some only-internal project without outside applications or interest, and so forth. Now at least they: 1) Work at an open code. 2) May contribute fixes in the future. 3) Developers can use the experience to use the same code base elsewhere in the future. 4) Who joins and knows Minix can be productive faster without learning something internally produced. BSD sounds like a license that allows companies to steal value, but in that case it only improves the global outcome. On the other side BSD is a bit of a real problem in the cloud because it limits two of the most important business models of OSS code: services and products, but only in case of software you sell as-a-service.

thrillgore 9y ago

He's gloating over a significant security flaw baked into Intel hardware.

nacs 9y ago
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.
- thrillgore 9y ago
  I think i'd word my statements better if my software was involved in a big security exploit, just to totally cover my ass now that the pentesters are going to hammer my kernel.

znpy 9y ago

I think it's foolish of Mr Tanenbaum to expect how Intel used Minix in their super-secret project. I mean, it's super-secret. Telling him "Congratulation, Minix is now the most widely used OS in every x86 pc, but we cannot tell you why and how" would have blown pretty much everything. Any average person would have done 2+2 and would have understood what was going on. Beside this... I think it is important that this would not have happened if Minix was licensed under the GPL. Not this way, at least. Intel would have had to find another OS (possibly paying for it) or develop one ex-novo (again, paying for it). So it would have happened anyway, but at least it would have been much more expensive for Intel.

ajnin 9y ago

> These discussions were why we put MINIX 3 out under the Berkeley license in 2000 Is he implying that he chose that license specifically because Intel asked for it ? He claims that that license is the most user-friendly since it gives the user the most freedom, which is true in that case, but he's missing the point, when the FSF and other GPL proponents mention user freedom they talk about the end user freedom, the one at the end of the chain that will have to use the software (i.e. anyone who purchased a semi-recent Intel chip). When considering the user community as a whole, it is clear that they globally get less value from the project since changes don't have to (and don't) get contributed back and they can't make changes to the software that they are using. Seems very short-sighted to claim a win here when the only 2 parties that benefit are Intel and Tanenbaum's ego.

bm1362 9y ago

For anyone unfamiliar with Minix, it appears to be a tiny OS: > MINIX 3 is a free, open-source, operating system designed to be highly reliable, flexible, and secure. It is based on a tiny microkernel running in kernel mode with the rest of the operating system running as a number of isolated, protected, processes in user mode. It runs on x86 and ARM CPUs, is compatible with NetBSD, and runs thousands of NetBSD packages.[1] Something about this [2] made me feel bad for the author, I can't imagine building software for a few decades, getting excited about a conference and then no one submitting any papers. [1] http://www.minix3.org/ http://www.minix3.org/ [2] > Unfortunately, the MINIXCon 2017 conference had to be cancelled due to the small number of talks submitted

dbolgheroni 9y ago

A lot of comments seems to converge on a license flamewar, almost blaming the choice of MINIX on using a permissive license like the BSD. It is not a license problem. Nor Mr. Tanenbaum position on "being glad" of MINIX being used on billions of x86 computers. Intel hiding code on all chips is the problem. Intel opening backdoors (maybe not intentionally, due to bugs) is the problem. Not being able to easily disable or update this code is the problem. If it wasn't the MINIX, Intel would use something else. If there wasn't, they would write their own OS for it.

xmatos 9y ago

Like it or not, that enforces the beauty of GPL. I'm positively sure, if it wasn't it, linux wouldn't be in its position today. I actually prefer the LGPL, as it doesnt spread through, or "contaminate", the rest of your code base.

neelkadia 9y ago

We need bring your own processor tech now.

brianon99 9y ago

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.