Do they provide sources?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| bigg May 23, 2008 6:48 AM EDT |
I read somewhere that not only do they not provide sources, they're also pretty combative with anyone suggesting they should. I've never bothered to investigate whether it is true or not. Okay, Google showed me this: http://beranger.org/index.php?page=diary&2008/01/18/22/49/54... It's from 4 months ago. |
| vainrveenr May 23, 2008 8:33 AM EDT |
Good link! It certainly seems that Zenwalk is falling down among several offshoots of Slackware, based upon comments regarding Zenwalk's arrogant attitude toward the GPL such as the above. OTOH, developers of other Slackware-based distros seem to be keenly bent on competing with Zenwalk, and this without ignoring the GPL or having to cop similar such questionable attitudes. Two such positive distros that come to mind here are VectorLinux and SLAX. Good review of Vector Linux at Martin's O'ReillyNet blog 'Taking A Good Long Look At Vector Linux 5.9 Standard', http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2008/03/taking_a_good_l... |
| rijelkentaurus May 23, 2008 8:45 AM EDT |
I hate this, because ZW is actually a very nice, smooth and well-made distro, if only they would get their heads outta that place that heads don't belong! |
| vainrveenr May 23, 2008 10:27 AM EDT |
Quoting:I hate this, because ZW is actually a very nice, smooth and well-made distro, if only they would get their heads outta that place that heads don't belong!Hear, hear! One of the previous Zenwalk versions is even noted for providing an incredible amount of support for wireless network access; and on a single CD no less. As Mayank Sharma writes in 'Tiny Zenwalk 5.0 packs a big punch' (posted courtesy of LXer Editor-in-Chief Scott_Ruecker): Quoting:How well can a single-CD 469MB distro hold up against every other multi-GB DVD distro available today? As it turns out, Zenwalk manages to squeeze in a long list of open source wireless drivers, as well as the proprietary Intel wireless device firmware. Surprisingly Zenwalk 5.0 not only does things you don't expect from a single CD distro, it does them with ease and very little command-line sorcery.( http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/99575/index.html ) |
| thenixedreport May 27, 2008 10:10 AM EDT |
Have you guys taken a look at this here? http://support.zenwalk.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16611 |
| bigg May 27, 2008 10:39 AM EDT |
I found this interesting: > As has always been, any of us packagers are required to keep and provide the sources to those packages we maintain, so certainly it will be a simple matter of adding those to a repository, when it comes available. That's exactly the point I made in the other thread on this. Any project will already have the sources. > I think, that with the ZENBUILD and the ZUR it should be fairly easy to make a script that pulls all the sources from the respective places and puts them in a repo. Exactly what I said as well. Download the sources to your hard drive, someone asks for the sources, burn them to DVD and send it to them. Not rocket science and not costly. |
| thenixedreport May 27, 2008 12:26 PM EDT |
This how one of the users responded to one of my questions... http://support.zenwalk.org/viewtopic.php?p=91441#p91441 |
| tracyanne May 27, 2008 1:11 PM EDT |
I think that about answers all the questions. |
| tuxchick May 27, 2008 1:17 PM EDT |
It answers nothing, it's just more stalling. |
| tracyanne May 27, 2008 1:23 PM EDT |
You do have it in for them don't you TC. I didn't see anything there that suggested stalling to me. |
| jdixon May 27, 2008 1:32 PM EDT |
Reading the thread it seems some of them actually believe they're not in violation of the terms of the GPL. I'm not sure what it will take to convince them if quoting the applicable sections of the GPL doesn't do it. They're not providing the full source with the binaries and they're not providing a written offer to provide the sources. Those are the two options the GPL gives you. A link to the code doesn't do it. Well, maybe they'll believe the FSF when they get back to them. |
| tuxchick May 27, 2008 1:41 PM EDT |
tracyanne, I have it in for people who serve up a dish of dog doo and claim it's chocolate pudding. This has been an issue since Zenwalk's inception, which has been covered in the various threads, and the devs have a history of arguing that they are not obligated to provide sources, and that even if they are it's a waste and they don't want to. All they have to do is shut up and get in compliance. It's that simple. I'm not going to agree that it's pudding no matter how many times they say it is. |
| thenixedreport May 27, 2008 1:48 PM EDT |
Quoting:and the devs have a history of arguing that they are not obligated to provide sources Proof? Quoting:I'm not going to agree that it's pudding no matter how many times they say it is. When did they ever say it was pudding per se? |
| montezuma May 28, 2008 11:51 AM EDT |
Well I think tc may have a point here. I checked the release history. Version 1.3 (the first version) was released in October 2005. It is now 2.5 years later and still no sources. Why not? I could understand a 1 year hiatus for a small project but approaching 3 years looks careless to me...... |
| Steven_Rosenber May 28, 2008 6:41 PM EDT |
Honestly, I've run ZenWalk before. It's pretty nice. But I can't believe they're not providing sources. I didn't think that sort of thing was going on. (Shows what I know ... not all that much.) |
| jdixon May 28, 2008 7:39 PM EDT |
> Shows what I know ... not all that much No. It just show how common compliance is. You come to expect it, and it's a shock when you realize it isn't there. |
| thenixedreport May 28, 2008 7:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:Well I think tc may have a point here There's an old saying of course. It's not what you say, but how you say it. |
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