Re: CD README's
On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Will Lowe wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Dale Scheetz wrote:
>
> > When I build a CD from a mirror of Debian's archives, I am building the
> > official Debian distribution. Our ftp sites are the definitive source for
> > Debian. To imply that only CDs constructed from our created images are
> > "official" is restrictive with no benefit to the end user.
>
> I think the point (originally) was that certain vendors (;cough Infomagic)
> had a tendency to do a crappy job with CD layout and other things ... some
> packages were missing, and (I could imagine) that things like making the
> disk bootable might be bunged up. At any rate, the end-user-linux-newbie
> buys one of these CDs from Infomagic (since, unlike RedHat, we don't
> produce our own cds and sell them directly), it doesn't work, and the
> user says "Debian doesn't work" and goes to Redhat or Slackware or ...
I understand the rational. I was there for the discussion.
I am currently the "liason" with InfoMagic for their current CD effort.
Every time I have suggested the "Official" CD this has been unacceptable
to the vendor. They need to control the number of CDs in a particular
"release" package. The Official CD policy doesn't allow them to "pick and
choose" among the provided CDs.
>From my own point of view as a "vendor" of gold CDs, as soon as I try to
add value to an "official" cd it can no longer be called "official", so
the official CD only gets in my way, yet the binary distribution I put on
a CD is bit for bit identical to the one provided on the "Official" CD.
The fact that I tend to unpack HOWTOs and FAQs for view "before" the
install, and do other little "touches" to make life easier, means that I
can not say I have the "Official Debian Release" because of the
constraints we wish to place on the use of "Official".
I spend most of my bandwidth keeping my mirror of Debian up-to-date. I
certainly am not going to try to suck 3 600 meg images down a 15K soda
straw. If these images help anyone at all it is the "big guys" with
resources, not folks like me.
>
> So by having an "official" CD image, and requesting that people who want
> to call their CDs "official" use them, we can enact a sort of quality
> assurance. 'Sides which, selling the masters at $50 a pop isn't a bad
> thing for our bank account :)
>
We also set ourselves up for an "Official" failure mode that will be just
as undesirable. When a vendor produces a "bad" Debian release, most of the
karma ends up on the vendor. When we do it ourselves, it all ends up as
ours.
> Will
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | harpo@udel.edu lowe@cis.udel.edu lowe@debian.org |
> | http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/ |
> | PGP Public Key: http://www.cis.udel.edu/~lowe/index.html#pgpkey |
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
Dwarf
--
_-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_-
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e-mail: dwarf@polaris.net Tallahassee, FL 32308
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