Hey Michael! I basically +1 what Steve said. To add a bit more to this, the current source-iso machinery doesn't take snaps into consideration, so the resulting isos weren't fully compliant anyway - especially after we adopted so many snaps on our images. The source iso codebase was in general unmaintained. I remember Laney once tried refactoring it to key on amd64 but that actually broke things even more, so we decided not to touch it if not needed.
I think archive snapshotting is a much better solution in overall, or at least pointing people to the manifest + lists files as a means of source retrieval. Maybe even offer a tool that would consume a manifest + list file to download all the sources if needed. I feel like it's the right way to go. I'm not really knowledgeable about the licensing compliance bits here of course, but I'm sure we can achieve that in a better way than having to provide 6+ isos with source content, which in my opinion nowadays wasn't very useful anyway. Cheers, On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 at 05:55, Steve Langasek <steve.langa...@ubuntu.com> wrote: > > 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 > -- > Ubuntu-release mailing list > Ubuntu-release@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-release -- Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak Foundations Team Tools Squad Engineering Manager lukasz.zemc...@canonical.com www.canonical.com -- Ubuntu-release mailing list Ubuntu-release@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-release
