Mr. Awad,
I have recently become aware that things are still not progressing
within Intel regarding the less than friendly policies your company has
towards open source projects. This is not the first time which I have
indicated to your company that I oppose these policies as a consumer,
and I am saddened to hear that Intel refuses to make good on the
evangelism of Intel personnel who have recently been stating that Intel
is open source friendly.
To become truly open source friendly, I suggest that Intel needs to
adopt these two simple policies:
- Provide a simple and completely open method by which open source
projects may redistribute firmware for Intel products. As it stands,
firmware redistribution licences either require the consumer or the open
source project to needlessly give up rights to be granted a
redistribution right. This is now clearly at odds with the majority of
other players in the industry, and it is a continuing thorn in the side
of the open source movement. Additionally, it seems that Intel is more
than willing to redistribute firmware freely when it corrects a major
quality issue, so there is much displeasure within the open source
community that Intel is only willing to open up to avoid a consumer
backlash. We are beginning to think that we should induce such a
backlash to move this issue forward. PLEASE NOTE: we are not asking for
access to the source code of any Intel firmware. We merely want the
unrestricted ability to redistribute firmware within our projects.
- Provide complete and open documentation for Intel hardware so that our
developers may create reliable open source drivers for Intel products.
Without documentation, our developer community must resort to reverse
engineering of Intel products, which does not result in code which is of
the same high quality as that which is created through the aid of
complete documentation. Again, this is an area in which Intel is clearly
outside the majority. It seems unfathomable that Intel would allow
itself to be put into a position where a consumer would mistake a poorly
reverse engineered driver for a poorly produced Intel product, yet this
is taking place right now due to Intel's failure to open documentation
fully. PLEASE NOTE: we are not asking Intel to supply source code for
their currently existing software or any future software. We simply want
access to the same hardware documentation that Intel's own development
team has access to, and we want that documentation to be provided in a
manner which does not tie up our developers in NDAs or other legal
instruments which strip them of their rights.
When Intel chooses to comply with these requirements then Intel
employees will be able to truthfully make the statement that Intel is
open source friendly. As it stands, any attempt by Intel at this stage
to paint the company as open source friendly will likely result in the
open source community making statements refuting this as, at best,
incorrect. It is highly likely that Intel will be painted in a much more
negative light - and rightly so, since the open source community would
have to be on board for Intel to actually be considered friendly to it.
I am speaking merely as a consumer - my only association with open
source projects is as a user and financial contributor. However, since I
first became aware that Intel was not supporting open source
development, I have since ceased the purchase of all Intel products, and
I currently advise all my personal and business contacts to avoid Intel
as well. Within the company I work for I try to educate all purchasing
agents as to the situation because we use open source software in
several facets of our business. I know that I am not the only open
source supporter taking this action, and I am sure that it is having an
effect on Intel's bottom line. Should Intel correct this behaviour in
the future, I will be sure to change my stance towards the company and
make all of my contacts aware of the situation.
Hopefully Intel will be able to come to a decision which will benefit
both Intel and the open source community.
Sincerely,
Breen Ouellette
