discontinuing source ISOs?

[Erich Eickmeyer]

On Thu, Jan 4 2024 at 09:30:05 -08:00:00, Steve Langasek 
<steve.langasek at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2024 at 08:28:28AM -0800, Erich Eickmeyer wrote:
>>  On 1/4/2024 8:21 AM, Steve Langasek wrote:
>>  > > With my flavor lead hat on, as far as I know, there's not a 
>> single
>>  > > official community flavor that is running their own mirror,
>>  > <https://xubuntu.org/download/>
> 
>>  If you investigate those mirrors, those are *not* run by the 
>> individual
>>  flavor. In fact, they seem to be pointing mostly at whole mirrors of
>>  cdimage.ubuntu.com, and in most cases, those providers are also 
>> mirroring
>>  releases.ubuntu.com. So, sadly, those are not mirrors done *by* the 
>> flavor,
>>  which means that argument is invalid.
> 
> The very first mirror in the list is
> <https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/xubuntu/releases/22.04/release/>, 
> which is a
> xubuntu-specific mirror and not a full mirror of cdimage.u.c.  So 
> they are
> distributing the Xubuntu ISOs without distributing the source ISOs.
> 
> They ALSO happen to be providing a full mirror of the Ubuntu archive 
> at
> <https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/ubuntu/archive/> so in effect are 
> meeting
> the GPL source distribution requirements without the source ISOs.
> 
> The second mirror in the list,
> <http://mirror.internode.on.net/pub/ubuntu/xubuntu/22.04/release/>, is
> similar.
> 
> So is the third, <http://ubuntu.ipacct.com/xubuntu/22.04/release/>.
> 
> And to the best of my knowledge, we do not maintain any official list 
> of
> cdimage.u.c mirrors in Launchpad, unlike the mirrors for 
> releases.u.c; so
> this is de facto a per-flavor mirror list regardless.
> 
> So yes, there are existing per-flavor mirrors that are distributing 
> binary
> ISOs; they are not mirroring the source ISOs; and no one is 
> complaining.
> The ones I've checked also happen to have an Ubuntu archive mirror
> alongside, so are effectively meeting the GPL source distribution
> requirements without the source ISOs (whether by design or accident, I
> cannot say).

I believe you're missing my entire point. These mirrors may or may not 
be set-up by the flavors themselves, and the providers could just be 
fans of the flavors. You can't make assumptions that the flavors 
themselves are providing them. Xubuntu, in particular, has a very wide 
fanbase.

I would like to point out though that one of those linked mirrors on 
https://xubuntu.org/downloads also provides 
https://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/ubuntu-cdimage/ubuntustudio/releases/23.10/release/, 
which I certainly didn't set-up and I highly doubt any of my 
predecessors did either. However, per the GPL, I can't stop them, and I 
have no reason to. Albiet that's a mirror of all of cdimage.ubuntu.com, 
and the same company mirrors both releases.ubuntu.com and 
archive.ubuntu.com, therefore, as you mentioned, meeting the 
requirements of the GPL by haiving the sources.

And de-facto per-flavor mirror list of cdimage.u.c or not, especially 
if the flavors themselves didn't coordinate it, you can't put that on 
the flavors as they don't maintain them. However, I would put that list 
on xubuntu.org squarely on Xubuntu for maintaining, but fact of the 
matter is they just might happen to know where to find mirrored images, 
nothing more. However, I cannot speak for Xubuntu, so I'll admit I'm 
making an assumption here, but Xubuntu does not speak for the other 
flavors in this case.

That said, I'm not interested in bikeshedding this any further. My 
entire point was that when there's a decision involved where it affects 
flavors, flavors MUST have a say.

--
Erich Eickmeyer
Project Leader - Ubuntu Studio
Technical Lead - Edubuntu

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