Re: Using Debian GNU/Linux as base for commercial linux
jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl <jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl> wrote:
> There are some pieces of advice I can give you
You might be overcharging... You forgot to say:
As a courtesy, and to avoid confused customers, if you find yourself
releasing modified packages please change the version [the release
identifier] in some distinguishing fashion. If you wish to build packages
you'll want to read the developers documentation on the web site.
* * * * *
> - Make sure you understand the licenses of software you're going to
> distribute.
Always a good thing.
> Software that's in Debian's "main" distribution is considered free in the
> DFSG-sense (http://www.debian.org/social_contract) and should be usable for
> commercial purposes. Be aware though that this interpretation is done by
> laymen and is not to be considered legal advice; get a lawyer specialising
> in copyright law if you want to be sure.
This depends on resources. If any software is found in main which we're
not free to distribute we should, of course, pull it out of main as fast
as possible. But I don't think it's very good advice to direct someone
new to debian to review all these licenses.
Now contrib, and non-free, those licenses are worth reviewing. [And, some
of those cdimages have contrib on them. Fortunately, or unfortunately,
the license for xfree86 doesn't require source code distribution, so
there's no obligation on anyone's part to distribute the cdrom which
contains xfree86 source code and contrib.]
> - Please set up your own infrastructure for supporting users, including
> a bug tracking system. This way, you deal with problems your modifications
> introduced yourself, and Debian developers only have to deal with problems
> that are present in Debian too.
This is getting into business advice, which I don't think we shold be
handing out.
Yes, if the distributor introduces proprietary packages then it makes
sense to introduce a bug tracking system, because we're not going to be
able to deal with those packages, and would simply discard such reports.
[Similarly, if packages are changed but changes are not integrated into
the main debian distribution, we'll be confused by such bug reports and
have to eventually discard them.]
However, note that if the distributor is tackling something important
to a number of people, like national language support (translations,
etc.) and is willing to have their work folded back into debian, we can
probably muster a team of volunteers to help integrate the work back
into the main distribution. We might even be able to issue a press
release thanking the distributor for their work.
However, if distributor distinguishes himself in other ways (advertising,
support, timeliness, ...), that's another story. [The distributor might
want to set up a bug tracking infrastructure anyways, and change the
documentation to match, but would be free to do this or not.]
* * * * *
There's a lot of possibilities (and a lot of personalities involved),
it's hard to make any really good generalized statements.
Good luck,
--
Raul
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