You're conflating different things. Intel is free to use MINIX which is exactly the freedom the creator of MINIX intended when selecting the license. You are not a party to that transaction.
That Intel uses this software for a purpose you disagree with is immaterial to this discussion. Had MINIX not been available under a permissive license, Intel would have found some other (but presumably more expensive) way to largely achieve the same thing. They did not come up with and implement the management engine because MINIX was BSD licensed.
> You're conflating different things. Intel is free to use MINIX which is exactly the freedom the creator of MINIX intended when selecting the license. You are not a party to that transaction.
We are not a first party in that transaction, but feel very much the consequences. Therefore it does involves others. Most actions have an influence on others and therefore there are responsibilities for the consequences.
If you sell lower quality concrete to a building company which builds a dam that break and kills many people, then you have blood on your hands and should be treated as such, even though you were not a first party in the dam construction.
> That Intel uses this software for a purpose you disagree with is immaterial to this discussion.
It is very much not immaterial. It _might_ be legally irrelevant, but it is not without importance.
> Had MINIX not been available under a permissive license, Intel would have found some other (but presumably more expensive) way to largely achieve the same thing. They did not come up with and implement the management engine because MINIX was BSD licensed.
I hope they need to spend a lot of money and energy and effort for taking others freedom away. The cheaper it is for them, the more likely they do it.
Your beef is with Intel and the ME (specifically, the inability to disable it), not with Dr. Tanenbaum, MINIX or the BSD license. There is no causal chain from these to the Intel ME.
It may feel good to have a target to direct anger at, but it's not the right target and it's counterproductive. Free software, including that under the BSD license, has made computing vastly safer.
I don't believe he is conflating anything. The author of the letter puts forward the notion that using the BSD licence was a good decision because it maximised the probability of companies like Intel using it. The commenter is implying that there's nothing particularly good about Intel having the free ability to shove a closed source ME-11 into most of our computers, that using a different licence would have in fact stopped them doing so, and that, contrary to your point, may in fact have led to them releasing the source.
"not party to that transaction" and "immaterial to this discussion" have no place here, we're discussing an open letter and we're free to evaluate his position however we feel. If the author wanted to have a private conversation with Intel he was free to do so.
That Intel uses this software for a purpose you disagree with is immaterial to this discussion. Had MINIX not been available under a permissive license, Intel would have found some other (but presumably more expensive) way to largely achieve the same thing. They did not come up with and implement the management engine because MINIX was BSD licensed.