[indiana-discuss] [pkg-discuss] src packages

[Shawn Walker]

Mike Meyer wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:15:38 -0600
> Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams at sun.com> wrote:
>> The GPLv2 allows you to charge for media.  Strangely enough it doesn't
>> talk about online bandwidth.  Using physical media is out for a build-
>> from-source option is out of the question.  The fair thing to do is to
>> host the sources and include pointers to both, the hosted sources and
>> the originals (because it's good to know where those are), using the
>> hosted sources by default for build-from-source.
> 
> Just curious - why do you think you'd want to use the hosted sources
> "by default"? With over a decade's practical experience doing this
> kind of thing, the BSD ports variants pretty much all make a first try
> from, well, not the originals, but the places the authors recommend
> getting things from. So building gnuccash will first try fetching
> sources from the half-dozen or so sourceforge mirrors, and if all
> those fail the gnucash site, and only if that fails will it start
> trying the various BSD repository mirrors.
> 
> Actually, that's not quite right. The first thing they try is a local
> cache of tarballs. So once you've fetched it, you won't fetch it again
> unless you explicitly ask to do so.

Because it is very dependent on the author.  Some projects (though I 
admittedly know of very few) probably would prefer you use your own 
bandwidth instead of theirs.

It also depends on how the original author stores and distributes copies 
of the source.  I have encountered more than one FOSS project along the 
way that didn't offer multiple versions for download; just the latest.

So, this has to be customised for each project to ensure you get what 
you expect when you attempt a fetch and rebuild.

Either way, the system needs to be smart enough to try multiple sources.

-- 
Shawn Walker