[Arm-netbook] EOMA68-A20 now booting Linaro distro from uSD card

[joem]

On Wed, 2013-09-18 at 15:30 +0000, Derek wrote:
> joem <joem <at> martindale-electric.co.uk> writes:

> > > Joe, you must specify your goal more clearly. So I'll ask once again: 
> > > 
> > > Do you want to recreate a Linaro ALIP image all the way from sources?
> > > 
> > > 
> > The goal is to create the freedom to distribute working bootable Linux
> > distro binary images with tool chain ready to be used as soon as it is
> > unzipped and dd'd into a SD card or a sata drive and satisfy the GPL.
> > 
> > $$$$ Krsching!! $$$
> 
> Joe,
> I don't think I get it.  Right now, to create a bootable SD card, I'd
> partition it, load a kernel and fex, and debootstrap Debian into a root
> directory.  What I'd need would be a list of packages, such as "basic",
> "development", or "desktop".  I don't think I'd be happy putting 100GB on an
> SD card, just to run a basic router.


The issue was that I was releasing binaries uSD cards
because my way of doing things is that I believe tools are more
important than recipes. It takes all sorts to make the world go around,
and that is where I stand on the importance of binaries.


Then gpl gets in the way and says, though my intentions are good,
in describing how the binary was built, its not good enough,
I (not some 3rd party) must supply the exact sources for all items in
the binary and working tools.


When I release the 2GB uSD Card binary bootable distro for eoma,
I am obliged to supply the exact sources for each item that has a gpl
license.

I also intend to distribute soon a uSD binary with ubuntu 12.04.3 with
toolchain and everything set up for eoma development.


So I at some time in the future will put together all the sources as a
link to download the 100GB odd of all the sources that went into making
the exact same binaries as I am distributing. So you don't need to
download the sources if you don't want to.

Just enjoy the 2Gb binaries as they are and make the router happen now!!

Its just that if I am the one distributing the binary, I must also
distribute the exact sources. And I will do it, because that is the
only way to guarantee others can also distribute binaries and produce
the sources on demand.

At the moment this responsibility is being shrugged off by a lot
of factories that make products, or is being passed on to others
when you load up a recipe for building a bootable uSD card.
It drains their time, your time, and creates support issues.
(The last things you want draining life out of product before it
is even born!)



> So, I'm not clear on the value-add to having your 1TB disk, rather than just
> a manifest list that I can pass to debootstrap or similar.  Then, you don't
> even need to host the source, as debian has source packages already
> available.  By the way, "source" packages and not "dev" packages contain the
> sources.

Eeek! Thanks for fixing that! 


> The best thing, I think, would be getting the 3.4 kernel patches to go from
> debian-standard to sunxi-lkcl-whatever as a debian package, making your
> "build and install" script as easy as 'apt-get linux-image-watcha'
> 
> soo... why fork a distro?
> 

Not forking here - the sources are exact copies of the sources that went
into making the various items of software I am distributing as a binary.