Really helpful. Thanks for your guidelines.
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Kapil Hari Paranjape <kapil@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
Hello,
Since there was a big thread on the FOSS Lab server, on BOSS before
that, and because of my experience with the Linpus Lite on Acer Aspire
One, I have formulated some guidelines. (There are similar pages
for the Fedora Spins and for Debian Pure Blends; see the links on
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianPureBlends).
If you are creating your own FOSS distributions (in order to
distribute to others!) here are some guidelines:
1. All distributions involve some amount of configuration and
customisation. Decide on a license for the distribution of this c&c
work (your work!), and ensure that it is compatible with everything
else which you are distributing. (Typically, GPL v2 or v3 should be
fine).
2. Every bit of software (and this includes documentation!) will have
bugs (which can include features desired by users but not yet
present). So be prepared to provide support (bug lists, mailing lists
etc.) for your distribution and (eventually) updates for the software
which you wrote.
3. A substantial part of your distribution will be based on the work
of other developers. Do not forget to give credit where it is due.
There are places where such attribution is not required legally but
you should act in a manner which is morally correct.
4. You may decide to include, as part of your distribution, large
amounts of documentation or other packaged software _as_ data. Ensure
that you have a license to distribute this material as is.
5. You may decide to bundle your distribution along with certain
hardware for which the software is customised. It should be possible
for anyone to obtain the software without purchasing the hardware.
As a customiser and distributor of FOSS you are doing a service to
the community at large. This is greatly appreciated by everyone; no
contribution is too small! The above guidelines are meant to ensure
that you will not lead your users astray by accident.
Regards,
Kapil.
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