Re: ia64 port
On 2000-05-29 at 23:29 -0700, Randolph Chung wrote:
> ***Disclaimer***: I work for Intel, but do not speak for them in any regard
> whatsoever. I also don't work with/for the IA64 group.
>
> > I readily concede that my concerns were hypothetical, but what else could
> > they be? I suppose that promising not to reverse engineer the BIOS and
> > motherboard controller firmware is not likely to lead to an egregious
> > problem, but my point is that you never know. I have a great deal of
> > respect for Chris DiBona, and I would credit his views on this as
> > deserving of great weight. On the other hand, I also recall Intel pulling
> > the "Appendix H" stunt some years ago, and that makes me, personally,
> > uncomfortable about whether they "get" the Open Source concept.
>
> Have you seen http://developer.intel.com/design/ia-64/downloads/245473.htm ?
Have you seen the link on that page to "Legal Information?" It is:
http://developer.intel.com/sites/developer/tradmarx.htm
I really have doubts about whether the left hand knows what the right hand
is doing at Intel. The license that applies to the only downloadable
information on the page, a PDF file, reads in part:
You may download one copy of the information or software
("Materials") found on Intel sites on a single computer for your
personal, non-commercial internal use only...
Am I prohibited from telling other people what is in the PDF file? Am I
prohibited from making use of this information in software I distribute?
Am I prohibited from using the information to optimize commercial product?
Obviously, Intel intends the information in that file to be disseminated
fairly widely, or it would otherwise be of no use. So why such a license?
If Intel actually tried to enforce this paranoid license, especially since
it is buried in a separate page accessed through a tiny link, they would
be laughed out of court.
> It's interesting to note that TurboLinux and RedHat both have IA64
> distributions out. There are public mailing lists where a lot of porting and
> kernel issues are discussed. The IA64 Linux kernel and compilers are open
> source (the Cygnus one anyway). For "porting" Debian to IA64, most of the
> work will involve recompiling and twaking existing GPL software. Intel has
> no way (or reason, really) to restrict what you do.
Agreed, your position is reasonable. So who tells the Intel lawyers?
-- Mike
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