Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 02:03:41 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, wes@softweyr.com Cc: tedm@toybox.placo.com, ewayte@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral Message-ID: <20010706020341B.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: <3B4560DD.428634F8@softweyr.com> References: <000701c10452$ca818600$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <3B4560DD.428634F8@softweyr.com>
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From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD Mall now BSDCentral Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 00:55:25 -0600 > Or not, if every other distributor that actually cares to distribute > FreeBSD has dried up and blown away because WRS has been handing out > exclusive access to the "official" FreeBSD ISO images. We already discussed this during the FreeBSD developer's summit at USENIX - I don't think things are as dire as that, nor is "exclusive access" even in the cards for anyone at this point. I'll explain. I've wanted since almost the very beginning to release all the ISO bits since the work which went into creating them often came significantly from the FreeBSD.org community (people like Steve Price and the ports team, thanks guys!) and it's only natural that I'd want all of that to go back. Unfortunately, I was also beholden to folks like Walnut Creek CDROM and BSDi since they were also paying my salary and that of several other FreeBSD folks who were doing much of the other work involved with publishing CDs. They could lay fair claim to at least some of the release engineering work I and others there did, though on the plus side there was also a pretty good relationship between Walnut Creek CDROM and the FreeBSD Project which was clearly of mutual benefit in many ways. Walnut Creek CDROM took FreeBSD to trade shows, paid for various types of contract work to improve things, ran the ftp.freebsd.org FTP site, etc. etc. They were also a small outfit that was approachable and easy to deal with and the sole owner, Bob Bruce, clearly understood the open source community and was a definite fan who "got it" when it came to dealing with folks like us. To give him his just due, he was just as much a pioneer in the open source "industry" as we were and thus a rather long-running partnership was able to grow out of our many mutual interests. Times have clearly changed, however, and Walnut Creek CDROM is long and sadly gone. Whether what's taken its place turns out to be a good match for the FreeBSD project or not still remains very much to be seen, but perhaps that's simply a clear indication that now's as good a time as any to re-evaluate the way we deal with external relationships like this and not simply take continuity for granted. We, for example, need to ask ourselves if there even should be an "official" CD distribution of FreeBSD and, if so, what the selection criteria for such officiality should be. FreeBSD has always been a meritocracy and I see no reason why CDROM vendors should not be selected the same way - put the bits up for grabs and may the vendor with the best customer service and charming bedside manner win. That's assuming, of course, that the changing internet economy and proliferation of high speed access leaves room for anyone to make a business out of selling "straight media" without any significant value-add. All the more reason to take a wait-and-see attitude and simply not endorse any distribution until the sands stop shifting around and we see who's left standing and in what condition. Now that I'm also back to doing release engineering purely on my own time (not that Apple would have any publishing interest in the resulting product in any case), I'm free of any conflict-of-interest constraints and can simply make the whole ball of wax available for FTP. Why would anyone want a ball of wax? I have no idea. It's a figure of speach. Anyway, the following is what we initially came up with at USENIX for FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE. Nothing is frozen in stone here and it's all subject to user feedback, so let me know what you guys think of this: o FTP release, as usual o 1 "Mini ISO" containing just the ftp release bits and XFree86. Intended audience is just those folks who want a [relatively] small and convenient boot image without any packages or "extras" other than X. o 4 "release ISOs" containing the usual base bits + packages. No Walnut Creek CDROM copyrighted material will be used, of course, though I've been gradually pruning that off over the last few releases anyway since it was largely all old and outdated DOS helper cruft (like view.exe) and I rather doubt that anyone has even noticed its absence. o A full collection of packages and distfiles, not broken up in any way but at least syncronized with the release bits (again, pretty much what we already do today). This is intended for DVD media folks like FreeBSD Services Ltd to come and package up in their own way given the rather different constraints they have on media sizing. Also, when Wes said the following: > Specifically, we need a Product Manager who can shepherd FreeBSD through > the release process, and coordinate with CD-ROM distributor(s) who are I think he perhaps wasn't clear on the fact that I'll still be "shepherding FreeBSD through the release process" and working with many of the very same FreeBSD volunteers to organize the bits, there just won't be any "official tie" to any one distributor. Given WindRiver's recent redirection of orders to BSD Central which started all this fuss, it's not even clear to us that they want to stay in the CDROM business anyway, but if they or anyone else (like the DVD folks) want to "coordinate" with us then they can do so simply by sending us, the volunteer release engineering and QA team, email with their requirements. We'll do as much to oblige them as the project has always done for any FreeBSD customer who's approached it with a reasonable request for increasing FreeBSD's mindshare or ease of use. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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