On Wednesday 22 August 2018 at 23:32:28, Martin Steigerwald wrote:

> Don Wright - 22.08.18, 21:56:
> > El Reg has [1]published a disagreement between a Debian maintainer and
> > Intel over changes to license terms in the latest CPU microcode
> > updates. The added terms (see comments) appear to attach liability to
> > both Debian and mirror sites if the end user violates certain new
> > restrictions regarding benchmarking. Debian has chosen not to play.
> >
> > [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/21/intel_cpu_patch_licence/
>
> Rant opened:
>
> /me prays for the end of proprietary CPUs.

<good reasoning snipped>

> Speed over quality. – Stop it already.
>
> Rant closed.

Personally, I agree with you, but just me and you as individual persons isn't
going to make any difference.

Nor is the rest of the membership of this mailing list, just in case everyone
else agrees with us too.

Intel will only change their practices when the *majority* of their customers
decide that "enough is enough", but unfortunately:

1) Intel sell very very few CPUs to individuals who are able to express their
personal preferences and can choose to buy other CPUs instead

2) the big-name laptop and server manufacturers who *do* buy the majority of
Intel's CPUs don't get the slightest whiff of any bad publicity to alert the
general public to the dangers lurking inside the chips they're passing on
inside their shiny new products

3) the vast majority of computer users either don't buy their own computers
(corporate employees) and/or don't have a clue about microcode vulnerabilities
(I'd suggest that's a five nines percentage of computer users in general), and
therefore aren't going to boycott Intel's (or anyone else's) closed designs
because they simply don't know what the question is.

So, in summary:

- you make a good point

- as many people as you can possibly contact might well agree with you

- it won't make the slightest difference

This disappoints me, but as a realist, I try to accept the obstacles in the
path to (my own and other people's) enlightenment, and I believe that banging
one's head against a brick wall is sooner or later bad for the health :(


Antony.

--
Users don't know what they want until they see what they get.

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