[Bf-committers] Fwd: Linux Installer for Blender

[Gregor Mückl]

Hi!

Unless they allow you to distribute the installer builder itself with the 
blender sources you might be in violation of the GPL as outsiders are then 
unable to rebuild blender in the form they obtained it. In the worst case the 
company which builds the installer might find itself forced to release that 
installer under the GPL because they allowed you to use that software for a 
GPL project and thus might be considered a part of that. I'm not 100% sure, 
though. Better talk to the FSF about it before taking any further actions.

Otherwise I'd say it's wise to settle with rpm, deb and tarball packages. When 
the rpm and deb packages are done correctly it'll be much easier for the 
users to handle that than a custom installer. AFAIK you can specify indivdual 
libs as deps for an rpm file and thus build distribution-agnostic rpms that 
work because rpm doesn't check it's database but the file system to determine 
if these libs actually exist.

With regard to custom installers (e.g. OO.o and Mozilla) I have to say that 
distribution makers actually are working hard to circumvent them. Mozilla is 
actually very easy to handle because it knows a "make install" target. And 
OO.o comes with lots of (quite) extra scripts in many distros which do the 
installer's work on their own when OO.o is started for the first time by this 
user (I've seen gentoo and SuSE do that). So installers on linux look more 
like a PITA to me. No matter which route you actually choose, keep a backdoor 
open.

Regards,
Gregor

On Wednesday 28 April 2004 11:15, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Hey Linuxers over here... what's your opinion of this offer?
>
> -Ton-
>
> Begin forwarded message:
> > From: Daniel Lopez <daniel(at)bitrock(dot)com>
> > Date: Tue Apr 27, 2004  22:18:55 Europe/Amsterdam
> > To: ton@blender.org
> > Subject: Linux Installer for Blender
> >
> > Hello Ton,
> >
> > We have created an easy to use Linux installer for Blender that we
> > would
> > like to contribute to the project. Blender is pretty easy to install,
> > but
> > having a good looking installer can be nice :) We can also customize
> > to your
> > specifications
> >
> > Features of the installer :
> >
> > - Native Linux look and feel
> > - Everything that you would expect from a Windows installer, but on
> > Linux :
> > License agreement (GPL in this case), where to install, installation
> > progress, README file, etc.
> > - Places a desktop icon (Gnome/KDE) for ease of use
> > - Runs in any Linux version. We have a Windows version in alpha and
> > OSX in
> > the works. We can also provide Solaris, IRIX, etc. if needed
> > - Easy to use : just download and double click (previously change
> > permissions to be executable, if needed)
> >
> > You can download it from
> > http://www.bitrock.com/blender/blender-2.32-installer.bin
> >
> > For an example of how it looks like:
> > http://www.bitrock.com/products_installbuilder_screenshots.html
> >
> > Our goal as a company is to make software (both open source and
> > commercial)
> > easier to use and install on a variety of platforms, with a focus on
> > Linux.
> >
> > We come from an open source development background ourselves and like
> > to make installers for open source products (for free, of course) such
> > as
> > Blender. For another example, take a look at Alvaro's Messenger
> > http://amsn.sf.net So far they have had about 70.000 downloads of the
> > installer and people seem to like it a lot.
> >
> > Let us know what you think :)
> >
> > Best regards
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> > --
> > Daniel Lopez Ridruejo             www.bitrock.com
> > President & CTO
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org
> http://www.blender.org
>
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