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Open-source champion Bruce Perens has called out Intel for adding a new restriction to its software license agreement along with its latest CPU security patches to prevent developers from publishing software benchmark results.
The new clause appears to be a move by Intel to legally gag developers from revealing performance degradation caused by its mitigations for Spectre and Foreshadow or 'L1 Terminal Fault' (L1FT) flaw speculative attacks.
"You will not, and will not allow any third party to ... publish or provide any software benchmark or comparison test results," Intel's new agreement states .
[...] Another section of the license blocking redistribution appears to have caused maintainers of Debian to withhold Intel's patch too , as reported by The Register.
[...] Updated 12:15pm ET, August 23 2018: An Intel spokesperson responded: "We are updating the license now to address this and will have a new version available soon. As an active member of the open-source community, we continue to welcome all feedback."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @12:48PM
Scene 0: Make a product, ship a billion, then have the world find out they have a wee problem.
Scene 1: Get the lawyers to prevent benchmark publication. Amounts to Intel themselves publicizing that the benchmark results are as bad as he who must not be named. This is probably worse that the actual results.
Scene 2: Busted, now it's ok to publish. Except now they will come out with a big spotlight shining on them.
Scene 3?: Perhaps Intel will do what they should have in the beginning. That is publish their own benchmarks showing the mods in their best light. (Any odds on this except messed up by showing results that can't be duplicated?)
Grab the popcorn and stay tuned. Except that the world depends on this stuff to work, this is a great show.