Re: SEUL: Some unanswered questions about SEUL (draft)

[Roger R Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <19971129121827.4516.qmail@sidney.remcomp.fr>, jfm2@club-internet.fr writes:
>
>I have bben suscribed to this list from the first day, I have been to
>the web site (not recently I confess) and there things which I still
>find unclear in this project.

So, somebody should answer this guy, so we look like we know what's going
on around here. I don't know all of what's going on around here, so I
figured I'd send some draft answers/questions to seul-leaders and let people
pick over them.

It's my impression that we're trying to leave our options open as much as
possible in many fronts. At some point, though, we will have to pick.

>1) What will be the license?  I do not remember any clear statements
>about GPL.

GPL is certainly the intended short-term goal. I heard mutterings about
charging money for distribution at some point down the road, if our costs
become nonzero. If that becomes the case, can we GPL our alpha/beta versions
of the product, and have the final version non-GPL'ed? Thus our answer would
be "all versions in the foreseeable future will be GPL'ed"?

>2) What will be the goals? 
>  A distribution made from the grounds up or one taking the best in
>each existant distribution and working from there to go farther?  The
>former approach leads to much wheel reinvention.  In particular I do
>not see why to build a new package manager when there are two good
>ones (RPM and DPKG) with source code available.

We've kept waiting until somebody tells us which one is better. One of
these days, we should pick...
I am very impressed with the redhat distribution, and I'm sure there are
other good attributes of other distributions. If we can combine those,
plus add 'help' programs and useful applications (what will these be? is
seul-seg supposed to be telling us that?) then we will have a useful product.

It's been mentioned several times on seul-project that the end goal of
seul is to have a seul-oriented distribution. Did we decide that because
we'd have more control over it (so we didn't have to trust redhat to keep
making good decisions), or because we thought we'd actually deviate
significantly from other distributions, or what? Do we still think this?

>3) Is this project for the sake of making a new distribution or for
>the good of Linux?
>  In the later case someone in SEUL should have contacts with other
>distributions when there is an idea we think would be useful to them.

Woah. I think his question is biased from the start. I think by the former
case he means "for making money", which he views as inherently bad (the
wording implies that a new distribution is not "for the good of linux")

(Aside from this, question 3 is a reword of question 2.)

>4) Project leaders are supposed to coordinate groups.  I do not see
>any dicussion going on and I have not seen any message stating what
>will be done in any particular area.

Are there active project leaders nowadays? I'm eager to make something of
seul, but I don't have the time to devote to it. Omega is working on
infrastructure (cvs, majordomo, web) coordination so we will be able to
handle the huge rush of people trying to do seul work (heh). And we're
neglecting the masses.

Omega and I tentatively decided that we would schedule the big push for
the beginning of next term (early January). It would include such things as
a functional cvs/web/mail system with uptodate information, advertisements
in redhat-announce and appropriate newsgroups/lists, etc.

Should we perhaps inform seul-project of this plan? Is a fixed timeline a
good idea? Can somebody propose projects to give seul-project, so work can
proceed in parallel?

--Roger 

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