Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:23:45 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: Tommy Hallgren <thallgren@yahoo.com> Cc: Randall Hopper <aa8vb@ipass.net>, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 3.1R ISO CD Image ?? Message-ID: <97624.919326225@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 17 Feb 1999 23:25:57 PST." <19990218072557.4066.rocketmail@send103.yahoomail.com>
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I'm not making ISO images available anymore due to several
factors:
1. Transferring 650MB images from ftp.cdrom.com uses up an "ftp slot"
(out of the 3600 available) for quite awhile in comparison to the
folks who just want to grab a 50K zip file and be gone again. In
the middle of the day, with up to 300 people grabbing ISOs at a
time, it's just not fair to the other users of the site and dg-ftpd
doesn't have any facilities (that I know of) for making certain
files available only during certain times, nor do I expect that DG
would much care to add such a feature. Even if there were provisions
for such a thing, it would be confusing to say the least and people
would generate tech support email over it during the times it was
not up for download. It's just not worth the trouble or the
bandwidth!
2. I personally feel that it hurts sales to put the full product CD up
for FTP. Some people agree with this, some don't, but I still feel
uncomfortable about it and a lot more people's jobs than just
my own are at risk if I make the wrong call on whether
it's a good thing (for promotion) or a bad thing (for CD sales)
to put the ISO images up for FTP. Probably best to just err
on the side of caution with this one, I think. CD sales directly
fund projects like the new package system and installer, for example,
and if we want the product as a whole to increase in attractiveness
then we've got to have *some* way of raising the tens of thousands
of dollars it takes to pay consultants who are capable of doing
that kind of work. No two ways about it. :(
3. It's not something I should even particularly need to do given that
anyone else could do it just as easily and absolve me of even
having to ponder the cruel trade-offs of point #2. You take one
FreeBSD distribution directory, one XFree86 directory, one pruned
(to fit one what's left of one 650MB CD image) packages directory,
blop it all into a single directory and run mkisofs over the whole
mess (scripts for doing which have always been in /usr/share/examples/worm)
and bingo, you've got an installation ISO image. If you've done a
local make release, even better - you have ${CHROOTDIR}/R/cdrom as your
starting point for both CDs #1 and #2 (the live filesystem) if you
want to go all-out and try and replicate the 2 CD snapshot distribution
CDs we do. How do you guys think I do it? Same way. :) CDs 3 and 4 are
just extra packages and ports distfiles that didn't fit on CDs 1 and 2
if you're _really_ keen to reproduce the commercially available product;
there's definitely no rocket science here.
You could then be a good samaritan and put these images up on
your OWN ftp site, as is your just and due right under FreeBSD's
free software licensing terms, and everybody's happy. The users
are happy because they have their ISO images available for download
again, produced "clean room" from WC's own product even, and I'm
happy since I don't have to deal with people tugging on my sleeve
and whining for ISO images like they were alms for the poor! :-)
- Jordan
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