Giacomo Catenazzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 2) It is difficult to say that microcode is a program: > there are surelly many entry points (one per instruction), > many exit point. Instruction are executed partly in parallel,... > It is too hardware dependent. You can see it also as a immage for > a chip. Then the electric flow are influenced by this immage (like > photocopy machines), but relly it is not a program (AFAIK, the > intel microcode is a list of changes of order of u-instructions > in instruction). But until we have not full (or also some) Intel > microcode and CPU internal build documentation, we cannot know > if it is software...
Oh, please! We know it's software. They call it *microcode*. Having many entry points, parallel processing, hardware dependencies: all these are characteristics of it, but it is still software. It isn't hardware, precisely because you can upload *different* microcodes and get different behavior. And Intel (IIUC) is preventing people from having the liberty to change and alter how that *programmable* function gets programmed. > 3) You should be more contructive. Intel already changed the license > because of Debian need. If you point to me exactly what is wrong > and what changes should be taken, I can tell Intel to improve the > license for the second time. They should conform to the DFSG. How hard is that? Relabeling a dog's tail to be a leg doesn't make it a leg. They need to make it *free software*, not just try and redefine terms so that it isn't software. Thomas
