[gentoo-dev] Re: rfc: deprecation of baselayout-1.x

[Duncan]

Rich Freeman posted on Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:50:28 -0400 as excerpted:

> I wonder if there is a way to get around keeping cruft in the tree for
> the sake of those who don't update often.
>
> Something that comes to mind is having a binpkg repository for
> everything in system - essentially a binpkg stage3.

Useful idea.

One thing to keep in mind when we're talking about the download of 
historical binaries is the obligations of the GPL, etc, in that regard.  
Gentoo doesn't normally have to worry about this as it normally ships 
sources, not binaries, and for current stage tarballs, which /are/ 
binary, the sources are, pretty much by definition as Gentoo handles it, 
made available at the same time (tho there might possibly be argument 
over whether they're made available at the same place, etc, I've made no 
attempt to grok or verify the legal minutia in that regard).

But once you start shipping historical binaries, as we're talking here, 
we need to worry about EITHER keeping sources available at the same time/
place for them too, as long as they're shipped, OR keeping them available 
to be shipped upon request to ANYONE for up to three years.  Based on 
previous discussion, the make available at the same time and place clause 
is considered easier for distributions such as Gentoo to fulfill than the 
upon request for three years clause.

(That's the GPLv2 requirements as I understand them.  I don't understand 
the GPLv3 and its differences in that regard really at all... except that 
I believe the same basic idea remains valid. IANAL.  The Gentoo 
Foundation folks are the ones who probably should be tracking this. 
Etc...)

This discussion came up at least once before, some years ago, when Gentoo 
was still making available historic stage tarballs dating back to 1.4 or 
earlier, and there was some real question as to whether we were sure that 
all the required sources were still available.  I never validated whether 
action was actually taken, but the conclusion from that discussion, IIRC, 
was that the best practical action we could take would be to (1) ensure 
that we always kept corresponding sources from then on and made them 
available at the same time/place as the binaries, and (2), quit 
distributing the "historic interest" stages that there was a legitimate 
question about as to whether we could provide sources or not.

Just something to keep in mind any time the idea of public availability 
of non-current binaries, for whatever reason, comes up.  It's not all 
purely technical worries, tho fortunately, implementation of the legal 
requirements does ultimately boil down to technical details, too.

I'd opine that's one practical reason why binaries remain a definite 
secondary from Gentoo's perspective -- sources-only lessens the legal 
requirements DRAMATICALLY, both as regards the GPL, and in regard to 
patents.

Hopefully that's not a discouragement for something that I really believe 
is a great idea, but it /does/ need to be considered.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman