A lot of comments seems to converge on a license flamewar, almost blaming the choice of MINIX on using a permissive license like the BSD.
It is not a license problem. Nor Mr. Tanenbaum position on "being glad" of MINIX being used on billions of x86 computers. Intel hiding code on all chips is the problem. Intel opening backdoors (maybe not intentionally, due to bugs) is the problem. Not being able to easily disable or update this code is the problem.
If it wasn't the MINIX, Intel would use something else. If there wasn't, they would write their own OS for it.
It is not a license problem. Nor Mr. Tanenbaum position on "being glad" of MINIX being used on billions of x86 computers. Intel hiding code on all chips is the problem. Intel opening backdoors (maybe not intentionally, due to bugs) is the problem. Not being able to easily disable or update this code is the problem.
If it wasn't the MINIX, Intel would use something else. If there wasn't, they would write their own OS for it.