[Bf-committers] Fwd: Linux Installer for Blender

[Gregor Mückl]

Hi!

Sorry for this second post. I overlooked your other responses.

On Wednesday 28 April 2004 21:04, Daniel Lopez wrote:
> Hi Gregor,
>
> > 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.
>
> Not so easy, trust me on this, we have the scars to prove it :)  The
> problem is when the libraries have different versions or different names or
> the places to install the configuration files are different among
> distributions. I have not looked in-depth on Blender, so I do not know how
> much this applies, but I have found it to be true for any medium complexity
> program.
>
> In any case, I am not arguing for replacing RPM or DEB or even the
> tarballs. Just offer all of them for download and listen for the user
> feedback on how to improve each. You do not even have to learn to use our
> tool, we will happy to build the installers and handle the user feedback.
>

See my previous email. Building the installer yourself is an even more direct 
commitment to the GPL. Be very careful about what you say and do! I mean this 
for your own good because you want to keep selling a product, I suppose.

Regards,
Gregor