Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 12:38:34 +0100 From: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: Doug@gorean.org (Doug Barton), brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: This is stupid Message-ID: <v04220808b4f7c61c96aa@[195.238.1.121]> In-Reply-To: <200003170129.SAA20579@usr02.primenet.com> References: <200003170129.SAA20579@usr02.primenet.com>
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At 1:29 AM +0000 2000/3/17, Terry Lambert wrote: > 1) Use of a trademark derivative of "BSD", not "FreeBSD", > so the FreeBSD foundation is out of the loop; this is > purely a BSDI issue. Not true. Brett keeps insisting that his product must share the FreeBSD trademark, and therefore this *is* an issue that the FreeBSD Foundation would have to deal with. However, there are also issues that BSD, Inc. would have to deal with, if the parties involved wanted to create another product that was derived from FreeBSD but wanted to use a different BSD-related trademark. You need to clearly distinguish between these two problems. > But some people > do, and are obviously very emotionally attached to the idea of > "FreeBSD Must Not Fork", and so want to use a "FreeBSD" derived > name for another distribution. If so, then they're simply going to have to get over the issue of submitting their product to the FreeBSD Foundation before they can get approval, because of their fears that this would create an unfair business situation. > The "image" argument is an obvious impediment. It implies that > the vendor must start with a cruddy installer and user experience > (read: non-graphical and targetted at a tech-head), and keep the > BSD style "rc" files (which are anti-component in the extreme, > since they can't imply dependency ordering, and can't be easily > added to by way of drop-in or replacement components, and in general > would not be useful for a vendor like Oracle looking to make an > install script that made the database start/stop on system boot/halt). I don't think any of this is necessarily true. You could ship a two CD product that has your installer, your GUI, your startup scripts, etc... on one CD (the "Install CD"), and then have the standard FreeBSD CD in addition (as the "Data CD"). > How can we have two installers -- the thing that the system boots > into when it first boots on a new platform -- and have one of them > be preferred over the other, based on the CDROM it lives on? I simply don't see the conflict here. It's a matter of marketing and creating the installation process and instructions so that one CD is used first, and then the other CD is used. Who cares what else is on that second CD? > Not to inject any sense of history into this discussion, but the > first time Brett brought this idea up, all he wanted to do was: > > 1) Have a different default installer No problem. > 2) Install some components that weren't installed on a > default FreeBSD installation, and could only be put > on one with a custom install and a great deal of > knowledge already under your belt No problem. > 3) Add a default splash-screen No problem. > 4) Default to a graphical login (I may have misremembered > these last two) No problem. > 5) Install some commercial add-on packages that didn't > come with the Walnut Creek CDROM distribution, and > weren't likely to make it in past the purists who > feared a "dumbing down" of their beloved OS No problem. The only problems arise when you want to put all this on a single CD and leave off some stuff that is part of the standard CD image that Jordan creates, in order to make room for the added stuff you want -- and then to try to call the resulting product "FreeBSD". You can add all the stuff you want (of course, you'd have to have it on a second CD, since the first one by Jordan is completely full), the real problems come when you want to start trying to take stuff away. > The only point of conflict with his previously stated plans and > the "FreeBSD is everything if you want the trademark" camp is > to throw away the current installer. Not true. Not true at all. I think we all hate the current installer, Jordan most of all. The real point of conflict here is that Brett wants to add some of his own proprietary stuff, take away some of the standard stuff, get it all on one CD, and then call the result "FreeBSD". Add all you want, but you can't take away. > Personally, I think that if the current installer died the grim > death tommorrow, it would not be too soon. And it would still > be FreeBSD. I certainly agree with this statement, and I believe that Jordan would whole-heartedly agree with you. In fact, this is why Jordan has paid contractors to develop a whole new installer, and while those people didn't do everything they were paid to do, they did create some tools that Jordan can use when he gets back around to rewriting the installer himself. -- These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy ====================================================================== Brad Knowles, <blk@skynet.be> || Belgacom Skynet SA/NV Systems Architect, Mail/News/FTP/Proxy Admin || Rue Colonel Bourg, 124 Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.13.11/12.49 || B-1140 Brussels http://www.skynet.be || Belgium To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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