New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking
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New timing/side-channel resistant microcode patches have a license with a small change attached:
You will not, and will not allow any third party to (i) use, copy, distribute, sell or offer to sell the Software or associated documentation; (ii) modify, adapt, enhance, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, change or create derivative works from the Software except and only to the extent as specifically required by mandatory applicable laws or any applicable third party license terms accompanying the Software; (iii) use or make the Software available for the use or benefit of third parties; or (iv) use the Software on Your products other than those that include the Intel hardware product(s), platform(s), or software identified in the Software; or (v) publish or provide any Software benchmark or comparison test results.
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@bb36e said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
New timing/side-channel resistant microcode patches have a license with a small change attached:
You will not, and will not allow any third party to (i) use, copy, distribute, sell or offer to sell the Software or associated documentation; (ii) modify, adapt, enhance, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, change or create derivative works from the Software except and only to the extent as specifically required by mandatory applicable laws or any applicable third party license terms accompanying the Software; (iii) use or make the Software available for the use or benefit of third parties; or (iv) use the Software on Your products other than those that include the Intel hardware product(s), platform(s), or software identified in the Software; or (v) publish or provide any Software benchmark or comparison test results.
Just benchmark in Europe. Such a clause would be most probably void over here.
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@bb36e IOW, our new microcode makes your processor so slow, we don't want you to know it
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Will see if I'll end up even getting it, or if my CPU is too old (2011 model, the year, not the socket) for Intel to bother releasing any microcode updates. Although
to Intel for those terms and conditions. But, as said, I don't think that would be enforcable here so I can benchmark all I want.Edit: scrolled down through the very long list and yeah, I can get the microcode update. Woo.
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Oh, man, I can get my old IBM Aptiva from 1997 patched! Woo!
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@Atazhaia said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Oh, man, I can get my old IBM Aptiva from 1997 patched! Woo!
A microcode update to improve security on a system that's almost certainly running Win9X?
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If someone does publish a benchmark, would it even be possible to sue someone? Doesn't the first amendment prevent a court from forcing someone to take down that type of thing? I would imagine a benchmark falls well under the category of fair use in the copyright law.
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@mott555 said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
A microcode update to improve security on a system that's almost certainly running Win9X?
If I'd use the restore media it'd be running Windows 95 with Plus!
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I doubt this is enforceable. Same as NFL saying you can't talk about the outcome of a game.
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Does this mean that all benchmarking and profiling tools are now illegal to use on Intel CPUs? Did Intel's lawyers even talk to their tech people at all?
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@admiral_p said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Just benchmark in Europe. Such a clause would be most probably void over here.
Expect some Americans to celebrate it as a kind of freedom you Europeans will never know when their government forces them at gunpoint not to talk about Intel benchmarks in public.
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11:29 -!- Irssi: #go-nuts: Total of 731 nicks [0 ops, 0 halfops, 1 voices, 730 normal] 11:29 -!- Channel #go-nuts created Mon Nov 9 12:22:37 2009 11:29 -!- Irssi: Join to #go-nuts was synced in 3 secs 11:29 < BenLubar> With the new Intel microcode license, is "go test -bench" illegal? https://perens.com/2018/08/22/new-intel-microcode-license-restriction-is-not-acceptable/ 11:29 -!- l00t [~l00t@82.119.168.140] has quit [Quit: Leaving] 11:31 < hahainternet> it depends on where you live 11:31 -!- cgfbee [~bot@oc1.itim-cj.ro] has quit [Ping timeout: 256 seconds] 11:31 < hahainternet> it's doubtful in the EU, it's almost certain in the US 11:31 < noonien> BenLubar: i formally provide you a license to run the `go test -bench` command, if someone ask, tell them nuunien says it's ok 11:31 < hahainternet> IANALIt's ok everyone, nuunien says it's okay.
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There's no way in hell this shit is enforceable. The interesting question is: if they tried to sue you over this, could you sue them for frivolous term / suits?
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@topspin said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
There's no way in hell this shit is enforceable. The interesting question is: if they tried to sue you over this, could you sue them for frivolous term / suits?
If you hire the right attorney anything is possible.
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@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Does this mean that all benchmarking and profiling tools are now illegal to use on Intel CPUs? Did Intel's lawyers even talk to their tech people at all?
And how well-defined is the term "benchmarking and profiling tool"? Will I go to jail for life if I casually mention on Twitter that I'm only getting 25 fps in PlanetSide?
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@mott555 said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Does this mean that all benchmarking and profiling tools are now illegal to use on Intel CPUs? Did Intel's lawyers even talk to their tech people at all?
And how well-defined is the term "benchmarking and profiling tool"? Will I go to jail for life if I casually mention on Twitter that I'm only getting 25 fps in PlanetSide?
I think subtracting any two pairs of timestamps produced on an Intel CPU is now illegal.
Edit: Visiting a website that uses Google Analytics is now illegal if you have an Intel CPU.
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@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
11:29 -!- Irssi: #go-nuts: Total of 731 nicks [0 ops, 0 halfops, 1 voices, 730 normal] 11:29 -!- Channel #go-nuts created Mon Nov 9 12:22:37 2009 11:29 -!- Irssi: Join to #go-nuts was synced in 3 secs 11:29 < BenLubar> With the new Intel microcode license, is "go test -bench" illegal? https://perens.com/2018/08/22/new-intel-microcode-license-restriction-is-not-acceptable/ 11:29 -!- l00t [~l00t@82.119.168.140] has quit [Quit: Leaving] 11:31 < hahainternet> it depends on where you live 11:31 -!- cgfbee [~bot@oc1.itim-cj.ro] has quit [Ping timeout: 256 seconds] 11:31 < hahainternet> it's doubtful in the EU, it's almost certain in the US 11:31 < noonien> BenLubar: i formally provide you a license to run the `go test -bench` command, if someone ask, tell them nuunien says it's ok 11:31 < hahainternet> IANALIt's ok everyone, nuunien says it's okay.
No, nuunien say's OK for you, but said nothing about the rest of us.
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They've fixed it since the article was posted: https://01.org/mcu-path-license-2018
Copyright (c) 2018 Intel Corporation.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution.
Redistribution and use in binary form, without modification, are permitted, provided that the following conditions are met:
Redistributions must reproduce the above copyright notice and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of Intel Corporation nor the names of its suppliers may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this software is permitted.
“Binary form” includes any format that is commonly used for electronic conveyance that is a reversible, bit-exact translation of binary representation to ASCII or ISO text, for example “uuencode.”
DISCLAIMER.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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@SlackerD interestingly enough, the latest version of the actual file at the Intel download center site still seems to be using the old license. Hopefully they update it…
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@SlackerD The tech people at Intel took over the lawyers
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Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
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@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
No idea, tbh.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are instead transferred with base64 encoding.
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@masonwheeler said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are instead transferred with base64 encoding.
TWFuIGlzIGRpc3Rpbmd1aXNoZWQsIG5vdCBvbmx5IGJ5IGhpcyByZWFzb24sIGJ1dCBieSB0aGlz
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@bb36e Are those patches only installed if you manually do that? If they're required for security, I'd expect Windows Update to do it automatically, or at least some Intel tool.
And if that happens, then surely I'm not accepting any EULAs when auto updates happen?
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@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Did Intel's lawyers even talk to their tech people at all?
Like all lawyers in all industries, they probably follow the strategy: forbid everything in the EULA, then if it ever reaches court, both sides get to find out what is actually allowed.
Sad that the legal system works like that, but it does.
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@SlackerD said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@masonwheeler said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are instead transferred with base64 encoding.
TWFuIGlzIGRpc3Rpbmd1aXNoZWQsIG5vdCBvbmx5IGJ5IGhpcyByZWFzb24sIGJ1dCBieSB0aGlz
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ZSBzaG9ydCB2ZWhlbWVuY2Ugb2YgYW55IGNhcm5hbCBwbGVhc3VyZS4=RGVlemUgTnV0cw==
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@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
It's ok everyone, nuunien says it's okay.
Nuunien, Her Majesty's agent 006.99768818, with the Licence to Benchmark?
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You will not... use... the Software or associated documentation;
Pretty sure I'm reading that right. Don't care enough to go find the original license text to see if it makes sense in context.
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@anonymous234 said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@bb36e Are those patches only installed if you manually do that? If they're required for security, I'd expect Windows Update to do it automatically, or at least some Intel tool.
And if that happens, then surely I'm not accepting any EULAs when auto updates happen?
The Intel microcode update hit my Win10 machine last night. The update hit the forum server a few days ago.
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@M_Adams said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@SlackerD said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@masonwheeler said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are instead transferred with base64 encoding.
TWFuIGlzIGRpc3Rpbmd1aXNoZWQsIG5vdCBvbmx5IGJ5IGhpcyByZWFzb24sIGJ1dCBieSB0aGlz
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@jakjawagon Welcome back!
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@SlackerD said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@masonwheeler said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are instead transferred with base64 encoding.
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@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@M_Adams said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@SlackerD said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@masonwheeler said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Tsaukpaetra said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Text @SlackerD quoted said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
for example “uuencode.”
Is that still a thing???
It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are instead transferred with base64 encoding.
TWFuIGlzIGRpc3Rpbmd1aXNoZWQsIG5vdCBvbmx5IGJ5IGhpcyByZWFzb24sIGJ1dCBieSB0aGlz
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@ben_lubar said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
The update hit the forum server a few days ago.
So THAT'S what's been wrong. It knew about the EULA and decided "using NodeBB" is a form of benchmarking.
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@anonymous234 said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Like all lawyers in all industries, they probably follow the strategy: forbid everything in the EULA, then if it ever reaches court, both sides get to find out what is actually allowed.
Sad that the legal system works like that, but it does.
I was told by a lawyer in my company that this is exactly how patents must be written. You list the "claims" i.e. things that you want to be protected by the patent, starting with the most generic possible thing and progressively adding details, in the hope that when (if?) it gets to a judge, they will obviously strike down the first claims as much too generic, but they might actually grant you one of the claims more generic than what you really wanted to protect.
(so for example, imagining you were to invent the computer mouse, you'd start by claiming to have invented "any device to interact with another device", then "any device from the previous claim, where the other device is an electronic one" and so on, until you get to really describing how the mouse is different from a lever on a steam engine...)
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@remi this is how Amazon got the patent for white backgrounds in USA.
Amazon patents taking photos against white backgrounds
Web retailer granted ownership of "studio arrangement" by US Patents Office
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@Gąska Yes, that article would be exactly consistent with what I've seen in patents in my field of work. I guess that Amazon starts by claiming "any setup with a white background" (hence the headline) and then far down the list it claims what it actually wants to protect i.e. some minute arrangement of lenses that allows getting a specific result, so the latests claims are going to be "any setup from previous claims where the lens is XXX and the distance between lens and light source is YYY and etc."
I'm not claiming (ah!) that this system is good (IMO the patent office should throw out immediately some of the most outlandish claims, but we all know how little patent offices actually check), but it does make some sense and it certainly explains articles like the one you cite -- and those articles are much less baffling when you've been explained by a lawyer why claims are written this way!
Edit: to be clear, nobody, not even Amazon, expects the "white background" claim to hold in front of a judge, but this way they're sure that whatever a judge would hold valid will be as broad as possible.
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@remi said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
and those articles are much less baffling when you've been explained by a lawyer why claims are written this way!
Didn't you already do that in your previous post? And the answer is to be evil?
it gets to a judge, they will obviously strike down the first claims as much too generic, but they might actually grant you one of the claims more generic than what you really wanted to protect.
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@remi personally, I think patent approvals should be all-or-nothing, specifically to punish this type of mind games.
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@remi said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
Edit: to be clear, nobody, not even Amazon, expects the "white background" claim to hold in front of a judge, but this way they're sure that whatever a judge would hold valid will be as broad as possible.
Rounded corners!
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@remi Screwed up systems provide screwed up incentives, and this snowballs until the whole system is one big
It's also fragile--all it takes is a single judge to not throw out the outrageous claims and life gets obnoxious (and expensive) fast.
At what point do we just burn down the system and start over?
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@Benjamin-Hall said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
It's also fragile--all it takes is a single judge to not throw out the outrageous claims and life gets obnoxious (and expensive) fast.
Well, we have that risk no matter how we arrange the patent system.
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@Gąska said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Benjamin-Hall said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
It's also fragile--all it takes is a single judge to not throw out the outrageous claims and life gets obnoxious (and expensive) fast.
Well, we have that risk no matter how we arrange the patent system.
But that risk is tremendously increased by the current "'claim all the things" system.
Really we need to have the examiners throwing out these claims and having it stick. And give them incentives to do their job. How? No clue.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
And give them incentives to do their job. How? No clue.
Easy: give them financial penalties every time a patent they approved is declared invalid in court. Really, most problems with government administration can be solved fast and cheap by penalizing employees for making bad decisions. But no government will ever enact anything like that, for obvious reasons.
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@Gąska said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@remi personally, I think patent approvals should be all-or-nothing, specifically to punish this type of mind games.
I'll play
for a second here, and this is what I remember from that discussion with a lawyer:The idea is that is you just say the tiny little thing that you think is innovative, and only get protection for this, then you might open yourself to trivial workarounds that are not protected.
For example, imagine again that you've just invented the mouse (yeah, I looked around my desk for a possible example...), and you only get to write a claim for the bit that you think is innovative, you might describe a mouse with 2 buttons, because this is how you built it and it made sense to you with how you intend to use it in your applications etc. But if you only get patent protection for a 2-buttons mouse, then anyone can work around your patent by putting only one button, or three, or none at all. And this would be legal, even if the real inventive bit of your patent is not the idea to put buttons on the mouse, but the mouse itself (i.e. guide a pointer on the screen through moving an object in your hand etc.).
So you write the patent for a generic device without talking about buttons. But you are not sure whether this will be deemed too generic and just an idea, or an actual realisation (patents are not supposed to be about abstract ideas -- not that you must show that you have built the thing you patent, but you cannot in theory patent an idea, e.g. "guiding a pointer on screen with your hand", you need to describe an actual way to do that). So you also need to put in your patent a description of the actual mouse that you built (or intend to), that is with the buttons.
As often, it starts with a (relatively) reasonable idea, and probably even with several patents where the inventor got burned by being too specific and someone stealing their idea with a minor tweak. So it makes sense to extend progressively the scope of the patent.
Remember also that, despite being written in normal language and using technical words, a patent is not a technical document, it is a legal one. Therefore it follows some rules that are not the same as any other document, and reading one claim in isolation would be kind of reading a single line of code in isolation: it's meaningless and can be used to draw any conclusion ("look it says here 'delete all windows', that must mean this code wants to remove all glass openings from buildings!").
(again, I'm not really defending the system, I agree with what you guys said, I'm just explaining it like it got explained to me...)
More widely and in an abstract way, I think the idea is to shift (in part) the burden of deciding what exactly is "innovative" from the inventor himself (who may have a very biased view of the field and what he's done) to an external examinator who's supposed to be more objective and have a wider view. In theory this should be the patent officer, but in any case and independently of what the patent office says, ultimately this is the judge. In a perfect world with perfectly informed judges and infinite judicial resources, that could work...
Of course, this is flawed for many reasons, but there is a logic (I said "logic", not "morality"...) to it.
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@Gąska said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Benjamin-Hall said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
And give them incentives to do their job. How? No clue.
Easy: give them financial penalties every time a patent they approved is declared invalid in court. Really, most problems with government administration can be solved fast and cheap by penalizing employees for making bad decisions. But no government will ever enact anything like that, for obvious reasons.
In the current context of fiscal tightness (more or less everywhere in the world, judging from what makes headlines), I think that even just having the government fine itself would help, as long as the fine goes from one budget to another. Yes, it is kafka-esque, but I find some beauty in the idea of dealing with administrative mis-function by using another kind of mis-function...
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@remi said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
The idea is that is you just say the tiny little thing that you think is innovative, and only get protection for this, then you might open yourself to trivial workarounds that are not protected.
So, in order to stop the bad guys, you become the bad guy yourself? The people who claim they must make the widest patent possible, are the same people who later claim they must pursue even the slightest, most bullshit infringement case, because "if we don't do that we risk losing our patents by abandonment."
Fuck lawyers.
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@remi said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Gąska said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
@Benjamin-Hall said in New Intel microcode license disallows benchmarking:
And give them incentives to do their job. How? No clue.
Easy: give them financial penalties every time a patent they approved is declared invalid in court. Really, most problems with government administration can be solved fast and cheap by penalizing employees for making bad decisions. But no government will ever enact anything like that, for obvious reasons.
In the current context of fiscal tightness (more or less everywhere in the world, judging from what makes headlines), I think that even just having the government fine itself would help
But that completely misses the point. We need the employees to personally feel the pain of their bad decisions. Fining "the government" isn't painful to anyone specific.
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@Gąska it's a hard issue to solve. No patents is no good because it discourages innovation. Patents are also no good because they themselves discourage innovation, in practice. So what do you do? Probably decrease their validity period? Like, make them count for 5 years maximum?
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