From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 6 11:13:56 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6CCA16A4D4 for ; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 11:13:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtprelay01.ispgateway.de (smtprelay01.ispgateway.de [62.67.200.156]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 81D9943D1F for ; Tue, 6 Jan 2004 11:13:53 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from udo.schroeter@trionic-solutions.de) Received: (qmail 25942 invoked from network); 6 Jan 2004 19:13:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO SCHROETBERT) (555125@[217.228.147.72]) (envelope-sender ) by smtprelay01.ispgateway.de (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 6 Jan 2004 19:13:51 -0000 Message-ID: <02be01c3d489$39f5bd40$9800210a@SCHROETBERT> From: =?Windows-1252?Q?Udo_Schr=F6ter_=28Trionic_Technologies=29?= To: References: <024e01c3d471$5998b980$9800210a@SCHROETBERT> <3FFAF8ED.8070809@mac.com> Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 20:13:50 +0100 Organization: Trionic Technologies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Subject: Re: Commercial Distribution? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 19:13:57 -0000 > You're creating a "turnkey" system with a known and well-defined layout which > includes all of the dependencies to run your proprietary software. Look into > "man release", which discusses how to customize a build and create CD images. Yes, I already made a few builds. We're currently (mainly) looking into how we can make the installer more friendly for corporate helpdesks/IT personnel and how to customize KDE so users won't complain about this not being Windows so much ;) > You should also consider managing your software and it's dependencies as a > port, even though you might never submit the port of your software. On the > other hand, some people like anti-virus vendors have their commercial products > available as a port on a time-limited trial basis (security/vscan, , but > that's up to you... Yes, I'm planning to make two packages. One to install all the modifications and preferences to applications that don't need to be recompiled (this patch would be applied after install). The other package would contain the actual proprietary client software. We discussed the trial idea last year - maybe we will distribute the client and trial users can connect to a public test serever - we haven't decided yet (however, it is not a consumer product). > You're welcome to use BSD software in a commercial distribution. Have fun. > If you contribute useful things back, that's nice, but you don't even have to > do that much. Great, we had many idea for little tools and stuff like that (if only a day had 50+ hours!) Btw, I looked really carefully and couldn't find any FreeBSD-based commercial distro (if you don't count OS X). Am I just to stupid to find one or is this an idea whose time has not come yet? > IANAL: I'd worry more about falling in the shower and breaking my neck than I > would worry about SCO. Yeah, sometimes I just wish some SCO people would do the shower-neck-breaking thing. ;) > Well, you don't have to, but I would really appreciate it if you made > sure that send-pr was either removed or changed to submit bugs to > yourselves. You've probably already thought of this, but I wanted to > mention it, just in case. Yes, we thought of that. I just hope we don't overlook anything obvious! But on the other hand, our customers even call *us* when their Windows breaks, so you're probably not in danger anyway... Thanks a lot for the advice, that was really quick! I'll keep in touch and tell you how the project went, OK?