Re: Presenting Debian to the user at cloud provider marketplaces (round 2)
On Monday, 20 April 2020 16:57:19 PDT Noah Meyerhans wrote:
> This is a continuation, in spirit, of a thread from last summer, but I'm
> intentionally starting a new one here. [1]
>
> This post will specifically focus on the Debian AWS Marketplace
> listings, which are currently split across two AWS accounts [2][3]
>
> We've got some inconsistencies between our current listings and our old
> ones, and some long-standing issues [4] that would be nice to clean up.
> I'd like some input on how best to do so.
>
> Product title: For older releases, the title is listed as (e.g.) "Debian
> GNU/Linux 9 (Stretch)". For buster, it is "Debian 10 Buster". I prefer
> the formating used for stretch, and would like to update buster to
> match. I'm open to the idea of listing only the version number, and
> dropping the code name, but don't feel strongly either way. Opinions?
>
> Product overview: For buster, the overview is simply "Debian 10 "Buster"
> for Amazon Web Services." For stretch, it is a longer blob of copypasta
> from the Debian entry on Wikipedia. Neither of these is ideal, IMO.
> Some condensed version of About Debian[5] would probably be better, but
> I don't have anything specific in mind. Is there existing text that
> would work better here?
>
> Highlights: Stretch lists a couple of items in the "Highlights" section
> on the listings pages: "After 26 months of development the Debian
> project is proud to present its new stable version 9 (code name
> "Stretch"), which will be supported for the next 5 years" and "Debian 9
> is dedicated to the project's founder Ian Murdock, who passed away on 28
> December 2015". Buster is only "The universal operating system." I
> think pulling some snippets in from the release notes makes sense for
> buster. Agree?
>
> The AWS Marketplace requires some text for a "EULA". Currently we link
> to the Social Contract for that, but that's not at all written like a
> EULA and doesn't specifically discuss legal rights or restrictions.
> IMO, as suggested in #696596 [4], we should replace the EULA text with
> something similar to what's in the default MOTD. Thoughts?
>
> Support information: The stretch listing says "Debian is developed and
> supported by a diverse global community. It can be reached through a
> variety of means including email, IRC, and web forums." and links to
> www.debian.org/support. Buster indicates that "No Support is offered
> for this product" I'd like to make buster match the stretch listing.
>
> I think this has gotten plenty long enough, and covers the important
> things, so let's leave it at this for now. Thanks for reading, and I
> look forward to your input!
>
Hi Noah,
Thanks for bringing this up.
I use AWS professionally for many years now, and I'd like to suggest a few
things for consideration that I personally find useful when I am looking at the
AMI:
- I often want to make sure that this is *really* the official AMI, some kind of
link to the debian page that says "yes, this is indeed Debian's account ID
would make me feel more reassured.
- Next I often want to know when is the End of Life for this release, having
that information in AMI description would save time googling it.
- The reason why I use Debian AMIs is because they contain almost no bloat (if
you compare to how much stuff is in Fedora or Ubuntu), so having a handy link
to AMI build configuration that tells you what packages are pre-installed is a
nice thing IMHO
- I personally almost never read generic descriptions that usually say
something along the lines of: "this is a general purpose free OS, with so many
packages, and founded in 1815, and GNU and bla bla Linus Torvalds.. " but it
may be only me. I would prefer this be replaced with something more concise,
like bullet points. Example:
Debian 10 Buster
Webiste Url: https://debian.org
Debian cloud images: <url to the page that says that this is a really official
ami"
AMI Configuration page: <url>
Release Number: 10
EOL: ~ 2022
Arch: x86
More info: <link to all the rest of the generic descriptions somewhere on
debian.og>
Thanks
-------------------
Ihor Antonov
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