On Thu, Jan 04, 2024 at 04:41:43PM +1300, Michael Hudson-Doyle wrote: > Hello release team,
> In the course of recent refactorings of ubuntu-cdimage / debian-cd we > somehow broke the building of source ISOs. I doubt this is anything very > deep and can surely be fixed but there is another option: stop building > source ISOs. > AFAIU the point of a source ISO is GPL-compliance: if you are hosting an > ISO made out of GPL-licensed components you should really also host the > source of those components. However, we put source ISOs on cdimage (e.g. > https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/source/20231011.1/source/) not releases, so > everyone (?) who mirrors the ubuntu ISOs for us does not mirror the source > ISOs. > As our mirror operators have been working this way for approximately 20 > years without issue, perhaps it's time to stop making source ISOs and > delete even more code from debian-cd and ubuntu-cdimage. > WDYAT? As you know, I'm a fan of this. In principle, source images are useful for ensuring the distributors of our install images are complying with the terms of the GPL. But this is only true if they are *actually distributed together*, or if the source image is somehow useful for a distributor to rely on for the "written offer" option under the GPL. As you point out, the image files are not being distributed together. Mirrors of releases.ubuntu.com don't get these source ISOs; and where community flavors are running their own mirrors, AFAIK they aren't including the source ISOs. So if they're not being distributed together, the ISOs are no better than pointing at the apt archive for source (possibly with an appropriate index - which we do as a matter of course archive as part of point releases, so that it is possible to correctly reconstruct the list of required source packages + versions for point release images as well, not just GA images). And we ourselves long ago stopped distributing physical CDs, and I'm not aware of anyone else doing so - and if someone does, I think it's unlikely that they are also distributing https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/mantic/release/source/ on 6 DVDs! This just isn't a useful structuring of corresponding-source-for-image anymore, because we try to include the source for all flavors, and there are a lot more flavors than there were when source ISOs started being built; yet we've had zero bug reports from anyone asking to make these source ISOs more useful. And as far as OEM preinstalled systems are concerned, well - those systems use customized install media, so the "mainline" Ubuntu source ISOs don't satisfy the "corresponding source" requirement there either. So I think in practice, the source ISOs are not useful in their current state, haven't been for a long time, and therefore we should stop producing them. And as to whether there are costs in maintaining these: we basically only build source ISOs once or twice every release cycle, so the machinery to do so is very much the opposite of well-oiled. After the 23.10.1 respin of the Ubuntu Desktop images, I found that the source ISOs appeared to have become un-published, and I found it incredibly difficult to even work out the correct invocation of the commands that would allow me to re-publish the existing ISOs. debian-cd didn't even enter into it, I was just trying to drive ubuntu-cdimage to re-publish the previously built images... Dropping the source ISO builds from the release process (and not having to continue supporting them in the code) would be very nice. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer https://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- Ubuntu-release mailing list Ubuntu-release@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-release
