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by midjji 1531 days ago
So blacklist intel compiler in favor or GCC and CLANG, seems entirely reasonable!
1 comments

This assumes there's no performance/$$$ loss to switching, that you would have to justify to your org.
For anyone shipping binaries to customers using the Intel compiler could well be considered negligent. Intel have made it clear they will secretly sabotage /your/ customers if you use their tools to make your product and in fact they have done so. They will secretly sabotage you if you aren't a "pure intel" shop. Those actions were and remain completely hostile.

In the light of "Reflections on Trusting Trust" [1]

"Intel cannot be trusted to supply your compiler at any price." That's a point of view that is a lot more than just "a reasonable one to hold." The reflection on Intel and their lack of reckoning having been caught out sabotaging your customers is something any customer of Intel needs to consider - included in that assessment must be the expected value of the $$$ loss of purchasing from Intel. It's really not something anyone can responsibly ignore and fail to assess. Then go ahead and making your responsible and informed engineering and business trade off.

[1] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...

edit: The point being we all have a bar of "well they wouldn't actually do that" in a purchasing decision. That bar for Intel is dramatically lower as a result of this incident and failure to properly address it in full with a mea culpa and consequences rather than the ongoing minimum action required by the courts and damage limitation we've seen. It is very hard to see how the probability of them secretly sabotaging your goals could have gone down here.

That is what Intel think of their reputation and what they think they can get away with in their response to you.

I almost wish my org knew enough to make such policies.