I don't get it. Tannenbaum would normally keep it in a buildable state -- he's basically the Linus of Minix no?
As an aside I enjoy the irony that we are trying to build Minix on Linux systems many years after the debate...
As an aside I enjoy the irony that we are trying to build Minix on Linux systems many years after the debate...
To add another layer - as I understand it, the processors we are mostly running those Linux systems on are secretly running a minix based system for their management functions [1].
[1] https://www.networkworld.com/article/3236064/minix-the-most-...
Just to rant about this article though, I really dislike this statement by the author:
> Why on this green Earth is there a web server in a hidden part of my CPU? WHY?
> The only reason I can think of is if the makers of the CPU wanted a way to serve up content via the internet without you knowing about it.
That's absolutely not the use case here. Intel is not on some secret conspiracy to collude with governments to serve content from your computer.
The management system is a legitimately useful functionality for the support teams of large corporations, public entities (schools, local government), etc. enabling management of their fleet of user devices. It's a very unforgiving and thankless task to be able to support a worldwide workforce, for example, or large non-computer savvy users.
Now, does the Intel Management Engine pose a security risk. Absolutely! We tech folk should absolutely know about this capability and be able to make decisions if this functionality should be enabled for our fleet. Having it default "on" without a way to sensibly turn it off broadly or update it when necessary is a big issue. But this is nothing more than Intel giving the majority of its user base functionality that is desirable, not some deep laden conspiracy.
I don't like the Intel Management Engine running on my personal device. But I sure appreciate it for its intended use case and audience.
If it can serve data from your computer, it _will_ serve data from your computer.
Not everyone across the globe is confortable with lack of privacy on their own devices.
I fully wish that Intel would have gone with the "opt in" approach. Either opt-in with choices in architecture, or opt-in with the option disabled by default. It's the "always there, you don't see it, you can't disable it" thing that's the problem. Intel messed up here, for sure.
But the idea of the Intel Management Engine is sound and extremely useful. And it's the visceral (possibly unsubstantiated) attack against it in discourse that's the thing I'm addressing.
I mean, truthfully, maybe the only way to change things anymore is to be overly loud and exaggerate about issues, basically black & white arguments without any middle ground. Maybe social media has brought us to this point, where we can't see issues as both positive and negative. It kind of starts to sound like our politics, in this way. So maybe the only thing that could possibly change how the IME is configured or deployed is to be a huge stinker about it and make large noise. Sad, but that's probably the case.
Even a sensible opt-out approach would be better than what we have today, we're simply stuck with it whether we like it or now.
I think that's what makes most people disregard the fleet management aspect and leap towards the conspiracy angle.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine