Date: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 12:53:48 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@americantv.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Distributions: Leveling the playing field Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.19990914122930.04ad8c20@localhost> In-Reply-To: <83262.937333337@localhost> References: <Your message of "Tue, 14 Sep 1999 08:44:16 MDT." <4.2.0.58.19990914080305.047718d0@localhost>
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At 11:22 AM 9/14/99 -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > In that case, there's a problem in that the standards are not cut > > and dried and objective. This creates a big risk for anyone who > >Things, as they say, are tough all over. I can live with this one and >so can you. If there were not an intimate association between you and Walnut Creek CD-ROM, I would not be concerned. But because you are an employee (and, almost certainly, a shareholder) of Walnut Creek, it seems to me that Walnut Creek's interests might come into play in such a decision. This is especially true since, at least as of this moment, Walnut Creek still owns the trademark "FreeBSD." What guarantee would a third party -- or, for that matter, the contributors who have given their code or documentation in good faith -- have that decisions would not be made solely for Walnut Creek's benefit? > > Therefore, it does not seem to me that it is a good idea to discourage > > add-ons such as a better installer, so long as those improvements > > are clearly labeled as such and the original is included. > >Nobody is discouraging any such thing, you simply can't go write a new >one and then release it as part of "FreeBSD" and confuse the hell out >of everybody. Many things written by others are released on CD-ROMs labeled "FreeBSD" now. They include everything from XFree86 to GCC to a plethora of editors, network utilities, and other tools. The installation program even invokes some of these products -- e.g. the XFree86 installer! So, there is much precedent for including something that isn't itself part of FreeBSD or the output of the FreeBSD project, and even for having it run as part of the installation. What you seem to be concerned about, in this case, is the possibility that a third party component or utility will be mistaken for the FreeBSD project's work. Again, the current release already creates this problem by invoking, for example, the XFree86 configuration utility as part of the install. But if you absolutely insisted, it would be possible to keep code which was not the product of the FreeBSD project on a separate disk. This would parallel Walnut Creek's FreeBSD Toolkit, which contains a "snapshot" release and then other disks. In this case, the product name should be able to include the name FreeBSD, just as the FreeBSD Toolkit's name does. (Any other policy would unduly favor Walnut Creek, since it already does this.) Does this sound reasonable to you? > Do what I and Walnut Creek CDROM did instead and simply >contribute it to the project and get it into the source tree, then >it's no longer a divergent effort. Tada, "problem" solved. It is very likely that many things which were done as part of that distribution would be contributed. But this should not be a requirement. You yourself, in an earlier message, spoke of the notion of contributing code after a reasonable delay. Also, some bundled items might be the licensed property of third parties, in which case it would not be possible to contribute them. This should not preclude their inclusion in the product. --Brett Glass To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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