4:06 a.m.
Hi
"The article revealed that many distributions' maintainers were
erroneously assuming that they did not need to provide source
repositories for packages they did not modify, so long as the original
upstream distribution did provide the source code. This responsibility
is by no means new, but seems to have been widely overlooked. David
Turner, GPL compliance officer at the Free Software Foundation,
suggested that these distros might come into compliance by making some
arrangement with the upstream supplier.
Turner's suggestion was rejected by Max Spevack, Fedora Board chair,
partly because of the possible expense, but chiefly because it might
encourage forking and leave the upstream distribution open to legal
liability for the downstream one."
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/07/2044245&from=rss
Not sure how a agreement with upstream would encourage forking. Max, can
you expand on that?
Needless to say, a better working arrangement with derivative
distributions is pretty important for Fedora. We have a number of Fedora
derivatives out there that could be doing interesting modifications that
we need to look at.
Rahul
5:03 a.m.
On Sunday 16 July 2006 04:06, Rahul <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
"The article revealed that many distributions' maintainers were
erroneously assuming that they did not need to provide source
repositories for packages they did not modify, so long as the original
upstream distribution did provide the source code. This responsibility
is by no means new, but seems to have been widely overlooked. David
Turner, GPL compliance officer at the Free Software Foundation,
suggested that these distros might come into compliance by making some
arrangement with the upstream supplier.
Turner's suggestion was rejected by Max Spevack, Fedora Board chair,
partly because of the possible expense, but chiefly because it might
encourage forking and leave the upstream distribution open to legal
liability for the downstream one."
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/07/2044245&from=rss
Not sure how a agreement with upstream would encourage forking. Max, can
you expand on that?
Needless to say, a better working arrangement with derivative
distributions is pretty important for Fedora. We have a number of Fedora
derivatives out there that could be doing interesting modifications that
we need to look at.
There's a significant difference between derivative distributions and
third-party repositories. Most of the projects that use Fedora Core as a
base are third-party repositories. The derivatives are true forks, and are
not something we want to get tied to supporting, even though we certainly
don't mind enabling them.
The Fedora Project's code will remain freely available for the foreseeable
future, but there's no reason for us to take responsibility for providing
that source to keep a downstream distribution GPL compliant. If we enter
into an agreement with downstream distributions, we could end up being
responsible if changes in our code provisions result in those downstream
distributions being in violation of the GPL.
If we do make an open agreement to provide the code for downstream
distributions, it becomes almost as easy to handle a downstream distribution
as to host a third-party repository. Since a third-party repository would be
more restricted than another distribution, lazy packagers that want to
casually modify Fedora Core could end up forking it. Forcing them to
maintain their own code repositories raises the bar to a point where those
packagers would have to make a real commitment before forking.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com
http://www.n-man.com/
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nman64
Have I been helpful? Rate my assistance!
http://rate.affero.net/nman64/
--
5:14 a.m.
Patrick W. Barnes wrote:
On Sunday 16 July 2006 04:06, Rahul
<sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> "The article revealed that many distributions' maintainers were
> erroneously assuming that they did not need to provide source
> repositories for packages they did not modify, so long as the original
> upstream distribution did provide the source code. This responsibility
> is by no means new, but seems to have been widely overlooked. David
> Turner, GPL compliance officer at the Free Software Foundation,
> suggested that these distros might come into compliance by making some
> arrangement with the upstream supplier.
>
> Turner's suggestion was rejected by Max Spevack, Fedora Board chair,
> partly because of the possible expense, but chiefly because it might
> encourage forking and leave the upstream distribution open to legal
> liability for the downstream one."
>
> http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/07/2044245&from=rss
>
> Not sure how a agreement with upstream would encourage forking. Max, can
> you expand on that?
>
> Needless to say, a better working arrangement with derivative
> distributions is pretty important for Fedora. We have a number of Fedora
> derivatives out there that could be doing interesting modifications that
> we need to look at.
>
There's a significant difference between derivative distributions and
third-party repositories. Most of the projects that use Fedora Core as a
base are third-party repositories.
Not really. There are significant number of derivative distribution. In
fact, its the second largest base according to distrowatch.
http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence#fedora
The derivatives are true forks, and are
not something we want to get tied to supporting, even though we
certainly
don't mind enabling them.
This is also incorrect. There a number of distributions which basically
treat Fedora as upstream and then make modifications on the packages,
configuration or updates and do it continuously based on newer releases
of Fedora. Examples here include RHEL and blag
The Fedora Project's code will remain freely available for the foreseeable
future, but there's no reason for us to take responsibility for providing
that source to keep a downstream distribution GPL compliant. If we enter
into an agreement with downstream distributions, we could end up being
responsible if changes in our code provisions result in those downstream
distributions being in violation of the GPL.
If we do make an open agreement to provide the code for downstream
distributions, it becomes almost as easy to handle a downstream distribution
as to host a third-party repository. Since a third-party repository would be
more restricted than another distribution, lazy packagers that want to
casually modify Fedora Core could end up forking it. Forcing them to
maintain their own code repositories raises the bar to a point where those
packagers would have to make a real commitment before forking.
I think we should make it trivially easy to rebrand Fedora and look at
colloborating with derivative distributions. The form of colloboration
is not necessarily any sort of legal or business agreements but merely
working arrangements that help us understand what the derivatives or
doing and see if we can help out in mutually beneficial ways.
This is more and more important as there is a means to start treating
Fedora as a big base of packages which people do interesting things from
rather than just a consumer package.
Rahul
12:55 p.m.
O/H Rahul έγραψε:
I think we should make it trivially easy to rebrand Fedora and look
at
colloborating with derivative distributions.The form of colloboration
is not necessarily any sort of legal or business agreements but merely
working arrangements that help us understand what the derivatives or
doing and see if we can help out in mutually beneficial ways.
This is more and more important as there is a means to start treating
Fedora as a big base of packages which people do interesting things from
rather than just a consumer package.
+1. Many distributions (derivatives or not) produce useful tools and
ideas which could be used in Fedora, without re-inventing the wheel
(this is, besides, the whole idea of FOSS). Also, Fedora could provide
them with arrangements that could be useful for them.
We should strive to see developers of derivative distributions as
collaborators and lower the barrier of collaboration as much as possible.
-dim
--
Dimitris Glezos
Jabber ID: glezos(a)jabber.org, PGP: 0xA5A04C3B
http://dimitris.glezos.com/
"He who gives up functionality for ease of use
loses both and deserves neither." (Anonymous)
--
1:19 p.m.
On Sunday 16 July 2006 12:55, Dimitris Glezos <dimitris(a)glezos.com> wrote:
O/H Rahul έγραψε:
> I think we should make it trivially easy to rebrand Fedora and look at
> colloborating with derivative distributions.The form of colloboration
> is not necessarily any sort of legal or business agreements but merely
> working arrangements that help us understand what the derivatives or
> doing and see if we can help out in mutually beneficial ways.
>
> This is more and more important as there is a means to start treating
> Fedora as a big base of packages which people do interesting things from
> rather than just a consumer package.
+1. Many distributions (derivatives or not) produce useful tools and
ideas which could be used in Fedora, without re-inventing the wheel
(this is, besides, the whole idea of FOSS). Also, Fedora could provide
them with arrangements that could be useful for them.
We should strive to see developers of derivative distributions as
collaborators and lower the barrier of collaboration as much as possible.
To a degree, we already do a lot to enable derivatives. Our licensing,
trademark guidelines, and packaging processes are all friendly to
derivatives. The issue at hand is whether or not we would be willing to
accept responsibility for providing the source code as required by the GPL
for a downstream distribution. I really don't think we should. I'm happy to
enable derivatives, but I don't think we should take any responsibility for
them. We also need to be very careful in establishing any sort of
relationship with specific derivatives. There are plenty of political and
liability concerns behind doing so.
--
Patrick "The N-Man" Barnes
nman64(a)n-man.com
http://www.n-man.com/
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/nman64
Have I been helpful? Rate my assistance!
http://rate.affero.net/nman64/
--
9:08 a.m.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Patrick W. Barnes wrote:
To a degree, we already do a lot to enable derivatives. Our
licensing,
trademark guidelines, and packaging processes are all friendly to
derivatives. The issue at hand is whether or not we would be willing to
accept responsibility for providing the source code as required by the GPL
for a downstream distribution. I really don't think we should. I'm happy to
enable derivatives, but I don't think we should take any responsibility for
them. We also need to be very careful in establishing any sort of
relationship with specific derivatives. There are plenty of political and
liability concerns behind doing so.
The moot issue might just be whether upstream Fedora has the
means/methods/tools to validate that the binaries that are going into
the derivative are in-toto from the upstream repos. The derivative
distribution has the liability to produce sources for the binaries on
demand - if they can substantially establish that the so-claimed
upstream binaries packaged are no different from the ones obtained
through Fedora repos they might just be able to deliver a derivative
distribution.
I am not suggesting that upstream take on the onus for providing the
source, rather what I would like to know whether there can be a means
for the derivative distributions to point to upstream sources as
pristine and hence be able to (re)distribute them towards compliance.
:Sankarshan
ps; I am still looking into the earlier posts on this (MUA freakishness)
so pardon me if I post to a closed issue
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFEu5nI+g4kmZ76nyERAtRWAJ9VtBDDTOKDb8LLWAIzRdvtZJje7QCffzzF
BH8/lsqgWCKVtMiMqIBn5Eg=
=2wWl
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
7:29 a.m.
On Sun, Jul 16, 2006 at 02:36:28PM +0530, Rahul wrote:
"The article revealed that many distributions' maintainers
were
erroneously assuming that they did not need to provide source
repositories for packages they did not modify, so long as the original
upstream distribution did provide the source code. This responsibility
is by no means new, but seems to have been widely overlooked. David
I'm kind of shocked that anyone with the skills to maintain a derivative
distribution wasn't aware of the basics of the GPL.
Needless to say, a better working arrangement with derivative
distributions is pretty important for Fedora. We have a number of Fedora
derivatives out there that could be doing interesting modifications that
we need to look at.
And we need to do a better job feeding back to Fedora. There's just so
little time!
--
Matthew Miller mattdm(a)mattdm.org <http://mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux ------> <http://linux.bu.edu/>
7:39 a.m.
Matthew Miller wrote:
> Needless to say, a better working arrangement with derivative
> distributions is pretty important for Fedora. We have a number of Fedora
> derivatives out there that could be doing interesting modifications that
> we need to look at.
And we need to do a better job feeding back to Fedora. There's just so
little time!
I would be interested to know the kind of changes you are making to
Fedora and things that would make the process easier.
Rahul
2:08 p.m.
On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, Rahul wrote:
Not sure how a agreement with upstream would encourage forking. Max,
can
you expand on that?
Here's the full text of the email that I sent to Bruce Byfield, the
newsforge reporter, from which he quoted briefly:
==============
There are several reasons why the Fedora Project would be hesitant to
officially sanction downstream distributions to point to upstream code
repositiories, rather than those downstream distributions directly
redistributing the code.
The first has to do with the issue of forking. If the downstream
developer has improvements, those improvements should be fed into the
upstream code whenever possible. If downstream doesn't want to push those
changes upstream, then it makes sense that the downstream distribution
should bear the burden of redistributing the source for the forked code.
Secondly, there is an issue of legal liability. In the case of an
upstream distribution allowing a downstream re-distribution to point at
the upstream repositories, the upstream party would be assuming legal
liability for the downstream modifier, and that is not something that the
Fedora Project is interested in doing.
The third issue is that of cost -- which while a valid concern, in my
opinion is a lesser issue than the other two.
==============
--
Max Spevack
+ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MaxSpevack
+ gpg key -- http://spevack.org/max.asc
+ fingerprint -- CD52 5E72 369B B00D 9E9A 773E 2FDB CB46 5A17 CF21
6491
days inactive
6493
days old
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
8 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Dimitris Glezos -
Matthew Miller -
Max Spevack -
Patrick W. Barnes -
Rahul Sundaram -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay