Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

siva · 2018-01-25 20:21:26

Hey all,

I have a project system that my friends keep encouraging me to release publicly (eg, on a sourceforge link). I never really thought to release it, but lately the thought has been on my mind. I'm using 99% devuan packages; the only exceptions are palemoon (pulled from MX) and linux-libre kernel.

My only concern is with licensing or credit/citation of any sorts (not that I wouldn't give devuan credit, but maybe there would be more than just saying, "built on devuan" or something of that ilk). I've read that, since everything is under an open-source license, it should be free to redistribute. However, I'm wondering if there's more to the story -- or, more that I need to read. It would be agonizing to produce a derivative that gets me fined.

I was wondering how much truth is in the claim that a custom-built devuan can experience mostly-trivial modifications and still be branded as a project of its own. I'm also curious if any user has ever found him/herself in a predicament due to this: what happened, how was it resolved, etc.

fungus · 2018-01-25 20:29:52

First why pull palemoon from mx when you can just include the few kb of palemoon installer (pminstaller 0.24??) that does the installation and updates and takes 1'-30" to download and install.

Are you making a mirror repository of your own? If no, and you are using devuan then it is devuan. If whoever installs your system wants an update of your own scripts and modifications, how would they get them? See miyo-linux discussions and vuu-do here, there is probably many relevant points.

There is also a thread made by the admin of the forum of a list of forks and derivatives based on devuan.

siva · 2018-01-25 21:04:26

I appreciate the information and will look into the pm installer. I've been lurking and checking out some of those projects for a little over a week or so.

Are you making a mirror repository of your own? If no, and you are using devuan then it is devuan.

This was my original thought. However, I've observed that several other distros use, for instance, the analogous debian repositories in sources.list.d, so their public releases aren't completely debian-independent. In addition, I also observed other distros that seem to "clone" the bulk of debian packages, making small (if any) changes to the version. Those distros' repos seemed, essentially, to be debian ones.
This led me to speculate on how far a project can stray from its mothership (in my case, devuan) without aggravating any labeling, branding, or licensing issue.
All of that actually leads into my answer to your next question.

If whoever installs your system wants an update of your own scripts and modifications, how would they get them?

Thank you for asking this. My idea was to utilize devuan as the main repository, and any of my modifications in a separate one. If this were legal, it would seem to me the easiest way to maintain a small, one-man-army derivative, since I'm not flying by RHEL's ambitions.

Last edited by siva (2018-01-25 21:08:15)

golinux · 2018-01-25 21:17:06

You should be more concerned about Palemoon's licensing than Devuan's. Though MX may have taken care of that for you.

MiyoLinux · 2018-01-25 22:01:55

Devuan encourages Devuan-based distros.

MiyoLinux · 2018-01-25 23:35:21

golinux wrote:

You should be more concerned about Palemoon's licensing than Devuan's. Though MX may have taken care of that for you.

Now see...when I look at stuff like this, I want to have a nervous jerkdown.

http://www.palemoon.org/redist.shtml

fungus · 2018-01-26 12:04:22

I see it as perfectly reasonable.
If you were a bio-organic farmer and I took your tomatoes and injected ABCD chemical nutrient additive crap in it and passed it on as your delicious bio-tomatoes then you would have a jerkdown.

If you just pass on the opportunity to your natural product with your name on it, you would be thankful, I think! I think vuu-do came with palemoon, I don't know if it still does. I use it everyday.

siva · 2018-01-26 15:13:32

@miyo: I reached out to the PM licensing team with a few questions. Thanks for sharing the redistribution page from their site. I'm trying to find something similar on Devuan's site, but I might be illiterate, lol. It seems that devuan is really supportive of small projects, and I love that; I just want to make sure I have a document with any possible restrictions.

@fungus: reading the project page link in your signature, it looks like vuu-do comes with PM, so mayhaps I'll look into that as well. I did notice that the devs are cool with redistribution so long as the binary in the public OS is unaltered: doesn't include 3rd-party addons, custom settings, etc.

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#1 2018-01-25 20:21:26

Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#2 2018-01-25 20:29:52

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#3 2018-01-25 21:04:26

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#4 2018-01-25 21:17:06

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#5 2018-01-25 22:01:55

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#6 2018-01-25 23:35:21

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#7 2018-01-26 12:04:22

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

#8 2018-01-26 15:13:32

Re: Conversation about "officially" launching a devuan derivative

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