Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 03:49:32 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, jessemonroy@email.com, jessem@livecam.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Concern over ftp.freebsd.org Message-ID: <200105040349.UAA20041@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010503152741H.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> from "Jordan Hubbard" at May 03, 2001 03:27:41 PM
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> > I think that there is some legitimate concern over the, to all
> > appearances, unheralded demise of ftp.freebsd.org.
>
> Of course there is - do you think I and others involved have been
> turning handsprings over it all this time?
Clearly not; but Jesus is the first guy to stick his head up
about it, even if he didn't do a very good job of it.
> We've been
> hoping for the best and planning for the worst, and until I was more
> sure of the situation I wasn't comfortable in posting something that
> might only aggrevate the situation with the current hosting ISP.
I think this is the crux of things; if you had communicated
that information, that way, I think the outage itself would
have been a tempest in a teacup, and widely ignored while
people concentrated on the other issues around making it
unlikely to recur in the future.
> > When this happened, it seriously underscored the degree to which
> > the FreeBSD project depends on good faith effort by agencies not
> > under the projects direct control (as Linux depends on the good
> > faith and continued existance of Linus and those lieutenants who
> > hold the keys to the non-repository maintained source tree).
>
> I think I did cover this in my announcement, and we're certainly
> taking every step to ensure that we're not so firmly behind the 8
> ball should this kind of thing happen again.
I think we all appreciate that.
> > In the process, which was the creation of an internal release,
> > not a competing release, I found a number of other issues which
> > would preclude someone else from taking up the banner of FreeBSD
> > CDROM creation, should California break off and sink into the
> > ocean (or Jordan get hit by a bus or crucified by Jesus).
>
> You should probably state what those are rather than leaving your
> concerns so unspecifically stated. I'm sure that if I stopped
> producing and putting up ISO images, someone else would rapidly step
> into the fray since it's hardly rocket science to do so and there are
> a number of FTP sites who'd willingly host them. I think half a dozen
> different Linux distributions got started this way without anyone even
> needing to get hit by a bus, so the barriers to entry are probably
> lower than you imagine they are.
[1]
The "tools" directory is one big issue. It's not self-hosted
on FreeBSD, and the copyright on the executables isn't clear,
so it's not really easy to tell if you could just copy them from
the existing CDROM. Needing to copy them from the existing
CDROM at all is a chicken-and-egg problem, since they are not
stored in the repository.
[2]
The build process itself requires a number of files which have
recently become unavailable; they are not all present on the
mirrors, or the machines where their ports refer to them; the
complete list is:
bison-1.28.tar.gz jade-1.2.1.tar.gz
db164.zip jade_1.2.1-13.diff.gz
db164d.zip jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
docbk241.tar.Z libpng-1.0.10.tar.gz
docbk30.tar.Z libtool-1.3.4.tar.gz
docbk31.zip links-0.95.tar.gz
docbk40.zip linuxdoc-1.1.tar.gz
docbk41.zip make-3.79.1.tar.gz
eps2png-1.7.tar.gz mkisofs-1.13.tar.gz
gdevcd8.tar.gz netpbm-9.12.tgz
gdevdj9.c.gz pcl3-3.2.tar.gz
gettext-0.10.35.tar.gz pdf_sec.ps
ghostscript-6.50.tar.gz print-4.0.4.tar.gz
ghostscript-fonts-other-6.0.tar.gz sgmlformat-1.7.tar.gz
ghostscript-fonts-std-6.0.tar.gz tidy4aug00.tgz
hpdj-2.6.tar.gz tiff-v3.5.5.tar.gz
html-4.01.tar.gz unzip542.tar.gz
isoENTS.zip
In particular, the files "jade_1.2.1-13.diff.gz" and "pdf_sec.ps"
are generally unavailable since the failure. The frustrating
part of this is not that they can't be found (I eventually found
them, although the diff had the wrong checksum on at least two
sites); the frustrating part is that these are extremely version
dependent, and aren't stored with the source tree, so the future
availability of _ALL_ of them is as at risk as the two which were
only locatable via an Altavista search, and then only on a "stealth
mirror".
[3]
The build process is rather "CDROM as it is"-centric. This isn't
as big an issue, but it does make it much less useful for anything
but a distribution that is intended to be exactly like the Walnut
Creek distribution.
[4]
The FreeBSD trademark is still controlled by someone other than
the FreeBSD Foundation. I _did_ listen in on the conference call,
but I didn't interrupt with a question about your justification
for not transferring this to the foundation, sinceI didn't want
to undermine the discussion. It turns out that I strongly disagree
with your rationale for the non-transfer; it's impossible to point
to even one instance where the trademark has needed defense, such
that a legal entity with deep pockets needed to be the holder, and
in the case that such a need did arise, donation of legal services
to the foundation would be a tax writeoff, whereas coming out of
Walnut Creek's / BSDIs / Windriver Systems' pocket, they would be
a non-deductible expense.
Right now, having the trademark not held by the project is a risk
on the same order as losing the FTP site or losing the mailing
list master, or losing the domain name (this latter is held by the
project, but the project is not its own billing contact).
--
This is not to be spiteful, but what would happen if the holders of
these things suddenly became adversarial to the project?
> > Here is what outsiders have seen:
> >
> > Walnut Creek effectively sold FreeBSD to BSDI, in what appeared
> > to many of us to be an arranged marriage.
>
> Wrong. Nobody has sold FreeBSD to anyone and if you'd listened to ANY
> of the Wind River *public* developer calls (which, even if you could
> not participate in real-time, were archived for some time afterwards
> at www.wrs.com) you'd have heard it stated over and over, by the most
> senior WRS management, as something which very definitely was not the
> case. Wind River has no illusions about buying an open source
> project, not that it could even if it wanted to, and you shouldn't
> either.
I was on the calls, as a listener, participating in real-time, at
a speaker phone with other people.
As I mentioned above, the rationale for the non-transfer of the
trademark was weak (IMO).
I understand the logical arguments, but when critical project
resources change hands, then the project has been defacto
transferred, even if it has not been formally transferred.
> > The Windriver acquisition feels more like a Mexican divorce,
> > followed immediately by another arranged marriage with an older
> > gentleman whom our parents have chosen for us on the theory that
> > our judgement is suspect based on our previous failed marriage.
>
> The FreeBSD Project has always been free to pick its own allies as it
> sees fit, and I'm sure saner heads in the community are simply
> watching WRS very closely right now to see whether, once consumated,
> it's a marriage of mutual convenience, a one-night stand or merely the
> unfortunate results of excessive alcohol consumption. I currently
> work for WRS (in advance of the BSDi deal going through) and even I
> don't know the answer to that question yet. I can guarantee you that
> I'll be watching with just as hawk-like a degree of attention as
> everybody else, however, and I would hope that everyone can keep their
> preconceptions either way to a minimum and just wait to see how things
> develop. To do anything else would be foolhardy at best.
I have the same hopes. I think the concerns stem primarily from
the people who are using FreeBSD as an embedded systems platform,
which is in direct competition with the Windriver Systems primary
market.
I'm actually aware of a huge number of companies doing this for
their initial developement, and some are even in production, and
are just not advertising the fact they are using FreeBSD.
This concern is amplified by the recent problems with the PicoBSD
builds, using 4.3-RELEASE.
> > The situation with ftp.freebsd.org is unfortunate, as coincidence
> > goes. It does not add to the trust.
>
> No, but it truly is just a coincidence and hence shouldn't be held
> against the prospective bride.
As I said, I agree that the community should extend the benfit
of the doubt, rather than prejudging, but be prepared with the
technical equivalent of "mad money" should things head South.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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