These practices here, exactly are why I’ve been pro AMD for the last 25 years of my computing history. Intel just shot themselves in the foot again.
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Decided to say something about it on the Manjaro forums. If this gets merged I will personally revert it.
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So what made Intel think this would be acceptable? This is just getting maddening from that company, obfuscation and outright trickery seem to be their answer to competition. They have had plenty of chances to fly the straight and narrow… and choose not too. Those agreements are poured over, they are not written by some fucknut in the corner office.
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I can only imagine that they were hoping it would fly under the radar, and then in the future they could use it as a mean to control negative reviews in the future. Even if it is unenforceable, and would be thrown out in court, the threat of going to court against a 5,000lb gorilla would be enough to keep them quiet.
Far from saying Intel should be excused, but just adding perspective that public software release from within big corps is more keystone cops than … was going to say shuttle launch, but… perhaps that’s not a good example either. Maybe the sponge and tool count after a kidney transplant?
There are forms, growing in their complexity and absurdity every day within such companies that engineers fill out to release things. More and more the Engineers are being asked to interact with forms and automated systems that lawyers supposedly review, but my $0.02 is that this process means the Engineers are being asked questions they can’t and should not be asked to answer and the lawyers are not being pressed to understand the technical side of what they are approving.
I have no inside knowledge of Intel’s legal process per se, but… I’ve “seen it all” at this size and scale of company.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” -Hanlon’s Razor
How is this an engineer saying dont benchmark our shit yo? I can’t see this being anywhere on the engineering team. I see this like @kevinp sees it, slip it… hope no one notices for 6 months, wait for something bad to happen, shrug your shoulders and say its been there 6 months then sue like a motherfucker based off of it. Sadly with the their behavior throughout the years the benefit of a doubt is soundly gone from them.
Don’t you just love corporatism.
anyway they cleared things up…
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Microcode-License-Fixed
@tleydxdy might want to put that in the OP or title now.
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So, remember that little thing in Hawaii where some derp clicked on “missiles incoming, not a test” instead of “missiles incoming, totally a test.”?
Now imagine a similar intranet webform that an engineer fills out with check-boxes:
- click here for destroy the earth to protect skynet
- click here for security patch
- click here for security patch with benchmarking embargo
- click here for destroy the earth to kill skynet
I’m paraphrasing, but that’s what we are up against in many cases when it comes to IP management systems these days.
Lawyering in the tech world is evolving toward “Self-driving” and hits concrete dividers now and then… I don’t know that this is what happened here, but what I am telling you is that evil is not required to reach this scenario…
and to be clear, Intel was appropriately handed their hind-quarters and fixed the issue, but I think Phoronix’s response is closer to the appropriate one than the hysterical crisis-media approach elsewhere…
If Intel didn’t have a history of trying to crush their competition through obnoxiously anti-competitive behavior at its worst… and utter obfuscating of the truth at its best I could see an actual mistake. Problem is, this is Intel. Nothing in their history warrants any sort of benefit of a doubt though. This is why I think this was very much an attempt to slip something like this in… and pull it out when needed with legal action they know no one but another large corporation could afford.
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Yeah… we desperately need a more competative market. That’s 1 part competitors delivering, 1 part consumers being less blinded by brand bling and 98 parts putting some serious thought into our Intelectual Property legal system… It is a mess hotter than a Vega Frontier card overclocked… or an i9 before delidding…
See, this is the power we have with Linux that no other platform genuinely has. What Debian did really shows that they care more for freedom and less so in complying with a company simply over security. It’s incredible, and that’s a large reason for using Linux. We are in a rare position where our vote matters–sometimes.
These changes won’t only impact Linux but set a precedent for other open platforms as well. I know it’s a small step forward, but nonetheless an important one.
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this was not a victory but a side step from catastrophe that still looms in the air every time there is a new microcode patch. Intel burned there last shred of good faith that most were willing to afford them. as a “hater” of Intel i was looking forward to silicone fixes to specter and meltdown 2020/2021 now even if the silicone is fixed i dont give a rats ass its AMD or ARM for me ( ARM translation layer/ huge ARM CPU withstanding plus fixes for them as well.)
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Intel changed the licence to allow Linux microcode copy’s and benchmarks. Just add negative press FTW.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Microcode-License-Fixed
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More reason for me to go threadripper.
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“Neither the name of Intel Corporation nor the names of its suppliers may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.”
So… you can’t talk about the CPU or it’s performance regarding that it is a Intel Product!?
Does the new lisence not give that written permission now? I thought that’s what they fixed with it.
I’m not sure. Sounds to me that v1 was “no benchmarks of any kind” now in v2 its sounds like "you can say and tell all you want but not in the context of INTEL™ products…
…i could be wrong im not good with legal stuff
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Neither am I. Guess we just wait for the lawsuits or not and see where it goes.
Edit: I would love to see a reverse embargo though, a boycott I guess, when the new CPUs come out and just to rub it in Intel’s face. Make lots of videos about how you would make a video about their new CPU but for fear of legal repercussions will not and instead dedicate the video to AMD tech.
Their marketing team would probably get into actual fist fights with legal over that. At least that how I like to imagine it going. Just to spite them
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Intel has removed the ban for Linux. No explanation. Lack of exception processing.