Re: Using Debian GNU/Linux as base for commercial linux

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, Matjaz Skraba wrote:
> 
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I was told that Debian GNU/Linux is encouraged to be used as a base for a
> > commercial linux distributions. Is there any documentation needed for us to
> > start working on such a project and if so, could someone direct me to the
> > right person.
> > This would be commercial, national-customized distribution.
> > 
> > Thank you in advance!
> 
> I don't know of any documentation on this in particularly.  I suggest that
> you install Debian on one or more of your own machines, to become
> accustomed to it.  Then decide what special needs your customers have
> (presumably you will want to provide/translate some existing
> documentation).
> 
> As a project. we would value it if anything you created was returned to
> the project (under a suitable free licenses).  However, you are not
> obliged to do this.
> 
> Note that you *are* obliged to provide accessibility to source code for
> your customers.

Only to the software so licensed (like all the ``main'' Debian software).

If you bundle Oracle (for example) with the distribution, there is no need to 
provide its source to your clients.

> If you are looking at creating a distribution which is very similar to
> ours, you may want to look at http://cdiamge.debian.org, where you can get
> some CD images (if you have bandwidth to spare..)

A couple of points:

  1) Only fairly high level mirrors get access to the images at
     cdiamge.debian.org, so that should really say ``where you can find a
     mirror, from where to get a copy of the Official CDs''

  2) I'm not sure that the Official CDs are a particularly good starting point
     for anyone.  I'm certainly against encouraging people to download these 
     massive files, when many of them would be better off doing a network 
     install, and most of the rest would be better off mirroring the ftp 
     archive.

In this case, I'd recommend that you actually mirror the normal FTP archive, 
because that will allow you to install local machines via NFS, FTP of HTTP, 
and will allow you to use the debian-cd package to make your own custom CD 
images.

For mirroring, you can use mirror, fmirror, wget or rsync.  I prefer rsync, 
but there are not as many rsync servers as HTTP of FTP servers.

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any problems with this or other
questions.

Cheers, Phil.