[Spread-users] Anon cvs, yes, no, etc.

[Jonathan Stanton]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 12:04:07AM +0100, Joshua Goodall wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Yair Amir wrote:
> 
> > We actually don't care to track those that use cvs with accounts. We
> > care that others will have to go through the download page to have the
> > chance to get their info and comments. (They can always input
> > nonsense, but most agree). Anon-cvs defies that.
> 
> I am going to jump the gun and point out that the BSD-style license allows
> any existing copy of the 3.16.0 source tarball to be redistributed without
> requiring tracking, notification etc. That genie is already out of the
> bottle.

Yes. We realize that, and we knowingly chose the BSD-style license with
that in mind. Actually, Spread is already available without any tracking
of downloads...It is included in Caldera's OpenLinux 3.1 distribution
along with mod_log_spread. Hopefully in the future it will be available
from more venues as it's popularity spreads (little pun, bad I know)

> What's more, any of the existing holders of named CVS access can roll up
> and distribute snapshots, and even make a rough mirror of the repository
> through checkouts of the entire revision tree.
> 
> However, I personally am not doing so (although I have the facilities for
> it) because I recognise that the authors wish to gauge interest in this
> first OSS release with a couple of "paper barriers".

I think this is an accurate statement of the idea, while legally anyone
can offer downloads, practically many people will get it from the
spread.org site, and we gather some, volunteered, information from those
who do. That information is very useful to us. It has helped us to make
contact with several people we might not have otherwise, and helped us
to understand how people are using Spread better then we would have
otherwise. Hey, and I get some laughs from those who submit Celebrity
names instead of their own.


> I am considering submitting an entry for Spread in the FreeBSD
> ports/packages tree, at which point I *will* need an anonymous source
> download. I would choose to confer with the authors before doing so,
> because I respect their intellectual property no matter how it is
> licensed. No doubt those who create .rpm's, .deb's etc will feel the same.

Yes, we would be happy to talk to you about it. I know of a few people who
have created rpms and debs but they have not publicized them or
distributed them beyond their local university or organization.

Jonathan
-- 
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Jonathan R. Stanton         jonathan at cs.jhu.edu
Dept. of Computer Science   
Johns Hopkins University    
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