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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."
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, 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.