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Intel's Reworked Microcode Security Fix License No Longer Prohibits Benchmarking (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Intel has backtracked on the license for its latest microcode update that mitigates security vulnerabilities in its processors -- after the previous wording outlawed public benchmarking of the chips. The reason for Intel's insistence on a vow of silence is that -- even with the new microcode in place -- turning off hyper-threading is necessary to protect virtual machines from attack via Foreshadow -- and that move comes with a potential performance hit. Predictably, Intel's contractual omerta had the opposite effect and drew attention to the problem. "Performance is so bad on the latest Spectre patch that Intel had to prohibit publishing benchmarks," said Lucas Holt, MidnightBSD project lead, via Twitter.
In response to the outcry, Intel subsequently said it would rewrite the licensing terms. And now the fix is in. Via Twitter, Imad Sousou, corporate VP and general manager of Intel Open Source Technology Center, on Thursday said: "We have simplified the Intel license to make it easier to distribute CPU microcode updates and posted the new version here. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback and thank the community." The reworked license no longer prohibits benchmarking. Long-time Slashdot reader and open-source pioneer, Bruce Perens, first brought Intel's microcode update to our attention. In a phone interview with The Register, Perens said he approved of the change. "This is a relatively innocuous license for proprietary software and it can be distributed in the non-free section of Debian, which is where is used to be, and it should be distributable by other Linux distributions," he said. "You can't expect every lawyer to understand CPUs. Sometimes they have to have a deep conversation with their technical people."
In response to the outcry, Intel subsequently said it would rewrite the licensing terms. And now the fix is in. Via Twitter, Imad Sousou, corporate VP and general manager of Intel Open Source Technology Center, on Thursday said: "We have simplified the Intel license to make it easier to distribute CPU microcode updates and posted the new version here. As an active member of the open source community, we continue to welcome all feedback and thank the community." The reworked license no longer prohibits benchmarking. Long-time Slashdot reader and open-source pioneer, Bruce Perens, first brought Intel's microcode update to our attention. In a phone interview with The Register, Perens said he approved of the change. "This is a relatively innocuous license for proprietary software and it can be distributed in the non-free section of Debian, which is where is used to be, and it should be distributable by other Linux distributions," he said. "You can't expect every lawyer to understand CPUs. Sometimes they have to have a deep conversation with their technical people."
The power of the media.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Wouldn't that have meant Microsoft would have had to turn off the Windows score thingie?
Perhaps that didn't go over well ?!?
and everyone knows about it now
Slashdot may be a bully pulpit, but Bruce Perens desrves the credit.
If there's one silver lining to this shitstorm it's that AMD should continue to get more and more sales.
I know my next upgrade is going to be a ryzen because of spectre/meltdown and also to spite intel for basically preventing >4 cores becoming mainstream. If they'd have worked on jamming more cores into affordable cpus maybe we'd be seeing far more heavily multithreaded games & programs.
Intel alsready ammended the wording to allow benchmarking and licensing so it can be installed now in any OS. Looks like probably a Little over 10 percent slowdown but could be much less depending on work load. So what are we up to in speed reduction? I guess for most around 10 to 20 % if everything is enabled.
No faster than AMD's offerings, but at a 50% higher price. And they've been doing this for over a decade, knowingly putting out flawed CPUs just to beat the performance charts.
You like that Intel Inside bragging right? Open up your wallet then, the lying cheating fuckers at Intel would like to take as much as you're willing to give.
Only buy AMD.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This was utterly stupid of them. They had to know that this would only draw more attention to the fact and they had to know that they couldn't prohibit benchmarking. That simply wasn't going to happen. And now that they've had to retract this idiotic policy, they've practically ensured that every tech site is going to do loads of benchmarking when they might not have otherwise been interested (there were a few when Meltdown and Spectre first came out, but I haven't seen a lot of benchmarks for the newer varients), but because Intel turned this into a big story, now everyone is going to want to do benchmarks to ride the renewed wave of interest.
This was like getting pulled over by a cop and shouting, "Nothing suspicious in the trunk!" before the cop has even had a chance to ask for your license and registration.
My chip will now become something I did not pay for.
To put it into a car analogy: it’s like when you buy a car that does 1000 miles before refueling only to find out they cheated emissions and after updates now only gets 700 miles.
I bought my chip for HT. Even my mobo is useless now, because I want a full refund and I will be switching to AMD.
See you in Australian court INTEL.
On a binary blob, closed source, forbidden to decompile, study or whatever they wrote this: "As an active member of the open source community"?
Shame on them!
Turns out it was just some dumb fucking lawyer and as soon as the mistake was pointed out, they corrected it. We really didn't need jump to calling them "bitches" and "goat fuckers" right out of the gate like we did! I'm sure there are almost no goats being fucked over there!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Read about this if you're going to have doubts moron "tough lover" - your ignorance of what happened is remediable. Stop shilling FUD and READ ABOUT THIS STUFF if you want a valid opine on it. Jesus. Clue in.
Intel, I have no idea what bozo is responsible for this, but please do yourself and the world a favor and fire him. Out of a cannon. What this idiot managed to do with the "must not benchmark" bullshit was that everyone wants the benchmark results.
This stupidity now makes sure that everyone can get them legally, too.
Unless this microcode patch actually causes no performance hit, which would make it a great PR stunt, but is very unlikely considering what we've seen so far, this is about the worst kind of PR disaster you could possibly have gotten into.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When a company does not want people looking into its products and talking about its products?
Its time to find a new company with better products they allow full and open discussion of.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm sick and tired of these mega corporations getting a way with bullying us. They should have released a complete set of code and cooperated with those of us looking to ship hardware that respects a user's ownership over the computer. I can't wait until there are more designs and devices based around EOMA68- a modular computing standard that reduces the costs of designing and manufacturing devices that the users and community have full control over every bit of code. This is why you got to put your money where you mouth is and buy from companies like ThinkPenguin who have been pushing for and getting code released for critical chips (ath9k-htc), funding totally free operating systems (Trisquel, LibreCMC, etc), and generally funding/promoting/assisting with/pushing these sorts of effort forward (EOMA68).
> "You can't expect every lawyer to understand CPUs.
Well, I would think it is sort of a prerequisite for lawyers representing a fucking CPU manufacturing company to understand the licensing issues surrounding cpu microcode.
So, I'm not buying it. They knew the implications. Intel just wasn't expecting pushback on the licensing of their already nonfree proprietary software.
The sun is hot and INTC will be in shorts all the way to the bottom of the pool.
The time limited fixing of a not properly working product by the producer or vendor should be an obligational part of each purchase contract for new goods. As a consequence such an update would be subject to the original contract and any new conditions inapplicable. To my knowledge this is mandatorily implemented in EU states.