Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 02:31:29 +0200 From: Farid Hajji <farid.hajji@ob.kamp.net> To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Missing distfiles on FreeBSD-4.0 RELEASE CD-ROMs Message-ID: <200006010031.e510VT024264@mail-ob.kamp.net> In-Reply-To: <1725.959812280@localhost> (jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) References: <1725.959812280@localhost>
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Hi Jordan, > > 1. Some packages are derived from GPLed sources and dropping their distfiles > > may not be in the spirit of the GPL. The GPL states, that it is enough > That is incorrect and you simply need to read the GPL again a bit more > closely. The GPL requires that you make this material available I didn't really want to give this argument a lot of weight and also mentioned that it would be okay to point to network resources. This is not really that important after all. As you pointed out, the toolkit does satisfy the GPL in any cases, as does the freebsd ftp server among others... > > 2. Most Linux-Distributions come with full sources or at least a substantial > > amount of sources, and that includes sources for everything, including > What the Linux distributions are doing is what the linux distributions > are doing. FreeBSD does not slavishly follow everything that Linux > does and if it did, it would simply be another Linux. I don't see how > this point of comparison has merit. Of course, FreeBSD should not follow what Linux distributors do. One main reason for me to switch to FreeBSD, starting with 2.0, was that it was much more cleany organized and maintained (thanks to you too!) than average Linux distributions (the other reason being its stability and quality for mission critical applications). My point was here, that _other_ users I know started compairing FreeBSD to Linux and the argument was always, that FreeBSD were a much cleaner and _complete_ OS and were a real professional system that comes with _full_ sources. Many users actually switched to FreeBSD for this very reason. As a true FreeBSD aficionado, I'm now fearing that many of these less informed users may switch back to Linux, just to be sure to get sources (_they_ won't ever need). But please let's not start a religious OS war here. > In any case, this is simply how things are and isn't likely to change > until such time as DVDs become more popular or I'm allowed to increase > the size of the default distribution set. Going to 6 CDs would > give me the option of putting some distfiles on the same FreeBSD release > collections, but the price would almost certainly have to be raised > to cover the increased costs. Would you be willing to pay more for > the product if that were the case? If you asked me personally, it would be perfectly fine to raise the price a little to fit the higher costs of 2 more CDs. But I'm sure that a lot of users, if not the big majority won't agree here and I can understant that. Considering that the toolkit would be produced on a more timely fashion, it may be okay to use that as a complement to the -RELEASEs. But _please_ do refer to the toolkit on a more prominent place (probably on the CD-Cover and certainly on the freebsd website), mentioning that the distfiles had to be put there due to space requirements. This would save many users from being disappointed with their new regular -RELEASE CDs (as I was). Again, thank you very much for your patience concerning this issue! ;-) -Farid. -- Farid Hajji Broicherdorfstr. 83, D-41564 Kaarst, Germany Phone: +49-2131-67-555, E-Mail: farid.hajji@ob.kamp.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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