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Insofar as Tanenbaum's original letter was basically saying "I chose to be powerless to enforce attribution, but would have appreciated knowing," Tanenbaum maki

Insofar as Tanenbaum's original letter was basically saying "I chose to be powerless to enforce attribution, but would have appreciated knowing," Tanenbaum making a statement about the ethics of the use of Minix would similarly be a non-binding request. However, as the creator of Minix, I think going beyond having an amoral stance, to having an advocacy stance, would be nice.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
No, it wouldn't be "nice". It would be anything but nice. Too many people are having their view enforced over something that is beyond their control. Should Pentel say you can't write certain stuff with their pens and pencils? Why is HobbyLobby wrong if they want to have string attached to certain dollars of that they pay to their employees, specifically the healthcare dollars? I think HobbyLoggy is wrong is having those strings attached to something that the employee earned. Andrew Tanenbaum would have been wrong to ask Intel to not use Minix the way they used it. Hold Intel and may be US government accountable, not Andrew. I respect him more for what he said. It was refreshing to see a developer stick to the promise of the license and leave it at that, in true spirit of open source. When you have freedom of expression, you have to bear other's voices as well, however much you dislike them. Some gloating and one-up-man-ship was expected/inconsequential. Thank you Professor Tanenbaum for upholding the morals of open source licensing.