Hi,
On Thu, 2018-08-23 at 10:26 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote:
On 08/23/2018 9:34 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
On Wed, 2018-08-22 at 19:36 +0200, Peter Müller wrote:
[snip]
It looks like we have to rollback the microcode update. Intel has changed the licensing terms in such a way that we won't be able (and no third party either) to provide any performance benchmarks.
So if someone says on the forum that IPFire is "a little bit slower since the last update", that would violate that license.
That's a VERY broad reading of the license. What you describe is a subjective opinion of the performance of one installation from someone not associated with the project, as opposed to the project itself posting controlled performance benchmarks with before-and-after numbers.
That didn't come from me, but Debian and Gentoo:
* https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=906158 * https://bugs.gentoo.org/664134
RedHat and SuSE seem to be shipping the new microcode. Not sure if they saw the change of the license.
There is also a number of articles in the German news (at least) who share this opinion:
* https://www.golem.de/news/side-channel-angriffe-intel-untersagt-benchmarks-u...
[snip]
Basically, it isn't an option to ship this. Other distributions think the same.
I see the desire to err on the side of caution, plus the desire to put pressure on Intel to modify the license, but I'd argue it's overkill.
It is just ridiculous from my angle. Their primary sales argument is to be on top of the list of each benchmark out there. They probably forgot about that.
But this is more about a slight change to hide that they messed up *massively* here and a very bad attempt to cover it up. Now they got a proper Streisand going. Well done Intel.
I am so fed up with spending so much of my time trying to fix something that they got wrong and don't even own up to it. They are a shit company.
*Goes and punches a wall now*
-Michael
Tom
On 08/23/2018 10:38 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
On Thu, 2018-08-23 at 10:26 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote:
On 08/23/2018 9:34 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
On Wed, 2018-08-22 at 19:36 +0200, Peter Müller wrote:
[snip]
I see the desire to err on the side of caution, plus the desire to put pressure on Intel to modify the license, but I'd argue it's overkill.
It is just ridiculous from my angle. Their primary sales argument is to be on top of the list of each benchmark out there. They probably forgot about that.
But this is more about a slight change to hide that they messed up *massively* here and a very bad attempt to cover it up. Now they got a proper Streisand going. Well done Intel.
[snip]
I'm all for holding off on this as a principle thing, as it's clear that Intel's lawyers are trying to pull a fast one. From a practical standpoint, though, it's probably less of a problem.
Tom
On Thu, 2018-08-23 at 10:49 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote:
On 08/23/2018 10:38 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
On Thu, 2018-08-23 at 10:26 -0400, Tom Rymes wrote:
On 08/23/2018 9:34 AM, Michael Tremer wrote:
On Wed, 2018-08-22 at 19:36 +0200, Peter Müller wrote:
[snip]
I see the desire to err on the side of caution, plus the desire to put pressure on Intel to modify the license, but I'd argue it's overkill.
It is just ridiculous from my angle. Their primary sales argument is to be on top of the list of each benchmark out there. They probably forgot about that.
But this is more about a slight change to hide that they messed up *massively* here and a very bad attempt to cover it up. Now they got a proper Streisand going. Well done Intel.
[snip]
I'm all for holding off on this as a principle thing, as it's clear that Intel's lawyers are trying to pull a fast one. From a practical standpoint, though, it's probably less of a problem.
That's indeed a very good question. Licenses are there to be enforced.
I want the GPL and other licenses that IPFire is under to be honoured and I will enforce them if I need to. And therefore I will do the same with any other license of any other software that we use. Otherwise there is no point in using any license at all.
Let's hope that Intel will change this very soon and make sure that we are able to supply the fixes to their CPUs for free.
-Michael
Tom
Hello,
Hi,
[snip]
It looks like we have to rollback the microcode update. Intel has changed the licensing terms in such a way that we won't be able (and no third party either) to provide any performance benchmarks.
So if someone says on the forum that IPFire is "a little bit slower since the last update", that would violate that license.
That's a VERY broad reading of the license. What you describe is a subjective opinion of the performance of one installation from someone not associated with the project, as opposed to the project itself posting controlled performance benchmarks with before-and-after numbers.
That didn't come from me, but Debian and Gentoo:
RedHat and SuSE seem to be shipping the new microcode. Not sure if they saw the change of the license.
There is also a number of articles in the German news (at least) who share this opinion:
Heise has published one, too: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Aerger-ueber-Intels-Lizenzbedingunge...
It says there: Intel announces to publish a changed version of the license soon. Seems like the current version was copied from a NDA template, as confidentiality is one of the listed aspects - which does not make any sense at all in a public document.
However, as Michael mentioned, it illustrates the problem we all have with Intel: Technical mistakes with security impact happen - they must not happen, but unfortunately they do. A "normal" vendor would publish updates and a security advisory as soon as possible, keep customers and partners up to date, and maybe apologises for the problem.
They company did none of those in time. And it does not look like they are going to do so in future. Of course, that's exactly the problem with all major IT companies, there is no need to name them here. But if you do not like your ISP, there is an alternative. If you do not like an operating system, choose another. But nobody can afford to stop using nearly all modern computer hardware from one day to another - not speaking about the poor diversity situation on the market.
And so, trustworthy hardware remains a dream - at least for those users who care (or have to care) about security. It is wretched, absolutely wretched.
[snip]
Basically, it isn't an option to ship this. Other distributions think the same.
I see the desire to err on the side of caution, plus the desire to put pressure on Intel to modify the license, but I'd argue it's overkill.
It is just ridiculous from my angle. Their primary sales argument is to be on top of the list of each benchmark out there. They probably forgot about that.
But this is more about a slight change to hide that they messed up *massively* here and a very bad attempt to cover it up. Now they got a proper Streisand going. Well done Intel.
I am so fed up with spending so much of my time trying to fix something that they got wrong and don't even own up to it. They are a shit company.
ACK.
*Goes and punches a wall now*
"Wo sich sicherheitsmäßig alles in der Scheiße suhlt und stinkt zum Gottserbarmen..." (Sorry for the German swearwords, I do not have an English translation at hand. Feeling with Michael here...)
Best regards, Peter Müller
-Michael--
Microsoft DNS service terminates abnormally when it recieves a response to a DNS query that was never made. Fix Information: Run your DNS service on a different platform. -- bugtraq
On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 09:11:20PM +0200, Peter Müller (peter.mueller@link38.eu) wrote:
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Aerger-ueber-Intels-Lizenzbedingunge...
It says there: Intel announces to publish a changed version of the license soon.
They have. Without that obnoxious "no benchmarking" clause. I believe the new version is this:
https://01.org/mcu-path-license-2018
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
On Fri, 2018-08-24 at 09:25 +0300, Tapani Tarvainen wrote:
On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 09:11:20PM +0200, Peter Müller (peter.mueller@link38.eu) wrote:
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Aerger-ueber-Intels-Lizenzbedingunge...
It says there: Intel announces to publish a changed version of the license soon.
They have. Without that obnoxious "no benchmarking" clause. I believe the new version is this:
Yes, that is the new license. Guess we will have to update the package again...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512
On Thu, 2018-08-23 at 21:11 +0200, Peter Müller wrote:
Hello,
Hi,
[snip]
It looks like we have to rollback the microcode update. Intel has changed the licensing terms in such a way that we won't be able (and no third party either) to provide any performance benchmarks.
So if someone says on the forum that IPFire is "a little bit slower since the last update", that would violate that license.
That's a VERY broad reading of the license. What you describe is a subjective opinion of the performance of one installation from someone not associated with the project, as opposed to the project itself posting controlled performance benchmarks with before-and-after numbers.
That didn't come from me, but Debian and Gentoo:
RedHat and SuSE seem to be shipping the new microcode. Not sure if they saw the change of the license.
There is also a number of articles in the German news (at least) who share this opinion:
Heise has published one, too: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Aerger-ueber-Intels-Lizenzbedingunge...
It says there: Intel announces to publish a changed version of the license soon. Seems like the current version was copied from a NDA template, as confidentiality is one of the listed aspects - which does not make any sense at all in a public document.
Yeah sure. An accident. Accidentally they had a spare restrictive license next to the real one.
However, as Michael mentioned, it illustrates the problem we all have with Intel: Technical mistakes with security impact happen - they must not happen, but unfortunately they do. A "normal" vendor would publish updates and a security advisory as soon as possible, keep customers and partners up to date, and maybe apologises for the problem.
I wouldn't assist on the latter, but it is just essential to provide good quality updates as swiftly as possible.
They are a billion dollar company. It shouldn't be too hard.
They company did none of those in time. And it does not look like they are going to do so in future. Of course, that's exactly the problem with all major IT companies, there is no need to name them here. But if you do not like your ISP, there is an alternative. If you do not like an operating system, choose another. But nobody can afford to stop using nearly all modern computer hardware from one day to another - not speaking about the poor diversity situation on the market.
Unfortunately that's true that there isn't many alternatives out there.
And so, trustworthy hardware remains a dream - at least for those users who care (or have to care) about security. It is wretched, absolutely wretched.
However, we do have something in the pipeline that will be entirely independent from Intel and x86 in fact. However, I cannot publicly talk about this yet, and it will probably not be able to compete with systems on the top end of the market like our Premium appliance.
But it will be a very powerful and small system and hopefully allow us to get a step away from Intel.
[snip]
Basically, it isn't an option to ship this. Other distributions think the same.
I see the desire to err on the side of caution, plus the desire to put pressure on Intel to modify the license, but I'd argue it's overkill.
It is just ridiculous from my angle. Their primary sales argument is to be on top of the list of each benchmark out there. They probably forgot about that.
But this is more about a slight change to hide that they messed up *massively* here and a very bad attempt to cover it up. Now they got a proper Streisand going. Well done Intel.
I am so fed up with spending so much of my time trying to fix something that they got wrong and don't even own up to it. They are a shit company.
ACK.
*Goes and punches a wall now*
"Wo sich sicherheitsmäßig alles in der Scheiße suhlt und stinkt zum Gottserbarmen..." (Sorry for the German swearwords, I do not have an English translation at hand. Feeling with Michael here...)
Best regards, Peter Müller
-Michael--
Microsoft DNS service terminates abnormally when it recieves a response to a DNS query that was never made. Fix Information: Run your DNS service on a different platform. -- bugtraq
-
Michael Tremer -
Peter Müller -
Tapani Tarvainen -
Tom Rymes