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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: Suggestions for the free Unix projects
Message-ID: <1992Oct12.175611.25072@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University (Ogden, UT)
References: <1992Oct7.040347.425@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1992Oct12.042518.19839@serveme.chi.il.us> <EJH.92Oct12095359@khonshu.colorado.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 17:56:11 GMT
Lines: 70
In article <EJH.92Oct12095359@khonshu.colorado.edu> ejh@khonshu.colorado.edu (Edward J. Hartnett) writes:
>I only followed this thread sporatically. Did someone suggest that you
>have to buy a mastering system? That's crazy. I recently (two years
>ago) produced a CD of meteorological data for a research project I was
>working on. I can't remember the exact costs, but they were quite
>reasonable. I think I bought a trial version of the CD (pre-master I
>think they called it) for $500. Plus maybe another $300 processing
>cost. After getting the trial version and making a bunch of changes, I
>had 150 copies made for two or three bucks a copy. I think we charged
>people $35, which mostly covered all costs (including documentation of
>microfische). Of course, we weren't trying to make a profit, or even
>necessarily cover costs totally either, we had funding for this stuff.
>I sent the CO ROM people my data on 6250 bpi 9-track mag tapes, in tar
>format. I got the very strong impression that they could handle pretty
>much any media. In fact, I think the guy mentioned that a lot of
>people sent in a hard drive with the data, and that was the easiest of
>all. So it's quite easy to get the CD made. (Of course, it's a little
>more difficult to ensure there are no mistakes on it! As someone else
>pointed out, it can be a lot of work, and that cost money too.)
I am more interested in a CD now. I'm the guy who originally made the
cost-out for a CD distribution assuming that a mastering system was a
necessary cost. This was because the way it was included in a list of
prices posted by someone seemed to imply it was necessary.
Was the resulting CD in High Sierra format with the Rockridge extensions?
Was the data on the CD as a single tar image, or was it "unarchived" into
a normal file system heirarchy?
I would think that it would make a lot of sense for the data to be in a
usable format on the disk (perhaps with seperate partitions for each of
the source directories under /usr, with *all* symbolic links intact).
This would allow compilation directly from sources on the optical, which
I see as desirable, as well as future use of a "translucent" mount to
allow use of binaries directly off the disk, as well as "patches" made to
files "apparently" on the optical.
Another nice possibility is using Julian's SCSI boot blocks to boot from
the optical itself -- much in the way you can do an install on Sun boxes
from optical.
I think a simple tar file on an optical is of limited utility... am I back
to requiring a mastering system to do this? If not, what are the names of
some companies?
I also still maintain that I would have to have a package-based installation
system to compartmentalize code before I would feel comfortable distributing
the "copyleft" code parts of 386BSD this way through normal channels. Before
I get flamed for this again, let me say everyone else is free to ignore my
"idiosyncracies" and distribute the code to their hearts content (and their
own risk) if they think I'm off base.
And of course, all this is predicated on BSDI surviving the legal battle
with AT&T to insure that AT&T doesn't own the code... unless we are all
willing to pay an extra $180 per copy for the first 1000 copies to buy off
on a commercial UNIX license? Even then, it may not be possible to ship
sources.
Terry Lambert
terry@icarus.weber.edu
terry_lambert@novell.com
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
--
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