Re: "Official CD" screwups (Was: Why only one non-free section?)
On Tue, Sep 15, 1998 at 05:14:16AM +0000, Joseph Carter wrote:
> All right, I am REALLY becoming annoyed at seeing this.
>
> Infomagic, Cheapbytes, and LSL have all managed to over the small course of
> Debian history that I am personally aware of totally SCREW UP the Debian CDs
> and call them "Official" anyway. And it's just them that I know about!
> This is EXTREMELY frustrating.
Just curious (I just purchased the cheapbytes Mondo Linux pack with a debian
2.0 CD ) how Cheapbytes screwed it up? (I havn't had time ot look at it.)
> It has come to my attention that we simply CANNOT allow vendors to build a
> CD with whatever arbitrary structure they want and call it "Official"
> Debian.
definitly agreed.
> I see a few options at this time, some of them do not solve the problem.
>
> 1. We can ask the vendors to not refer to their CD-ROM distributions
> as "official" unless they are direct burns or presses of the
> official CD-ROM images available at cdimage.debian.org and
> mirrors.
> 5. Don't let ANYONE call their image "Official" without sending a
> Debian developer CDs to test first. Would any of the great
> hordes of us who aren't Johnnie or some of the others with Debian
> mirrors on our hard drives <g> care to volunteer? I know I
> certainly would.
Why not combine these? How about an "Offical CD" is one of the following:
A) A burn of the CD Image from the offcial FTP sites which is marked as
Offical.
B) An Image Aproved as Offical by a Debian Developer. Then maintain a list of
developers willing to check out and test CDs. Maybe setup an Offical system
for Vendors to submit requests to so that we know and to alert those developers
who wish to do this work. (I would be willing to do it)
Maybe just to be anal about it we should save a copy of an MD5 checksum
of the CD Image direct from the CD...Which is in turn PGP (or gpg) signed
by the developer who aproved it.
> 6. Write a specification of what makes a CD image "official" and
> what is expected to be on the CDs and where. On one hand we have
> to rely on someone reading this file, but on the other this
> allows the vendors to place little blurbs on the CD. Note there
> should also be explanation of what can NOT be on Official CDs,
> non-free software for example. We might point out that it is
> acceptable for them to include redistributable non-free packages
> on additional CD(s) if they choose to bundle with Official
> Debian, or that they can make unofficial/custom dists.
I think this should be done in addition to the above. This will let Vendors
know "Whats up" when creating their CDs before getting aproval (this would
make it a bit easier for aprovers). Maybe some script could be made up to
do some verification? (ie check sym links /directory structure, make sure
Packages.gz exists etc)
Also...Should it be ok to do this:
"This CD Contains Debian X.X Offical AND ...." Then put Debian on the CD
under Debian-X.X. Then put other things (like Non-free etc) on the CD
as long as they are not under the debian offical directory structure?
(of course with the size of these things lately its unlikely much elese will
fit on a CD soon...)
> I want opinions, additional creative ideas, discussion of the ideas I've
> brought up, or anything else people have to offer. And not just from
> developers either. I'd like to hear from users, vendors, and anyone else
> who cares to comment, it doesn't matter as long as we come to some kind of
> solution to what really seems to be a problem to me at least.
See above :)
-Steve
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