discontinuing source ISOs?

Wed Jan 31 00:04:21 UTC 2024

So do we think this reached any kind of consensus? Can I start deleting
code related to source ISOs?

Cheers,
mwh

On Fri, 5 Jan 2024 at 00:27, Lukasz Zemczak <lukasz.zemczak at canonical.com>
wrote:

> Hey Michael!
>
> I basically +1 what Steve said. To add a bit more to this, the current
> source-iso machinery doesn't take snaps into consideration, so the
> resulting isos weren't fully compliant anyway - especially after we
> adopted so many snaps on our images.
> The source iso codebase was in general unmaintained. I remember Laney
> once tried refactoring it to key on amd64 but that actually broke
> things even more, so we decided not to touch it if not needed.
>
> I think archive snapshotting is a much better solution in overall, or
> at least pointing people to the manifest + lists files as a means of
> source retrieval. Maybe even offer a tool that would consume a
> manifest + list file to download all the sources if needed.
>
> I feel like it's the right way to go. I'm not really knowledgeable
> about the licensing compliance bits here of course, but I'm sure we
> can achieve that in a better way than having to provide 6+ isos with
> source content, which in my opinion nowadays wasn't very useful
> anyway.
>
> Cheers,
>
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 at 05:55, Steve Langasek <steve.langasek at ubuntu.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 04, 2024 at 04:41:43PM +1300, Michael Hudson-Doyle wrote:
> > > Hello release team,
> >
> > > In the course of recent refactorings of ubuntu-cdimage / debian-cd we
> > > somehow broke the building of source ISOs. I doubt this is anything
> very
> > > deep and can surely be fixed but there is another option: stop building
> > > source ISOs.
> >
> > > AFAIU the point of a source ISO is GPL-compliance: if you are hosting
> an
> > > ISO made out of GPL-licensed components you should really also host the
> > > source of those components. However, we put source ISOs on cdimage
> (e.g.
> > > https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/source/20231011.1/source/) not releases, so
> > > everyone (?) who mirrors the ubuntu ISOs for us does not mirror the
> source
> > > ISOs.
> >
> > > As our mirror operators have been working this way for approximately 20
> > > years without issue, perhaps it's time to stop making source ISOs and
> > > delete even more code from debian-cd and ubuntu-cdimage.
> >
> > > WDYAT?
> >
> > As you know, I'm a fan of this.
> >
> > In principle, source images are useful for ensuring the distributors of
> our
> > install images are complying with the terms of the GPL.  But this is only
> > true if they are *actually distributed together*, or if the source image
> is
> > somehow useful for a distributor to rely on for the "written offer"
> option
> > under the GPL.
> >
> > As you point out, the image files are not being distributed together.
> > Mirrors of releases.ubuntu.com don't get these source ISOs; and where
> > community flavors are running their own mirrors, AFAIK they aren't
> including
> > the source ISOs.  So if they're not being distributed together, the ISOs
> are
> > no better than pointing at the apt archive for source (possibly with an
> > appropriate index - which we do as a matter of course archive as part of
> > point releases, so that it is possible to correctly reconstruct the list
> of
> > required source packages + versions for point release images as well, not
> > just GA images).
> >
> > And we ourselves long ago stopped distributing physical CDs, and I'm not
> > aware of anyone else doing so - and if someone does, I think it's
> unlikely
> > that they are also distributing
> > https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/mantic/release/source/ on 6 DVDs!
> This
> > just isn't a useful structuring of corresponding-source-for-image
> anymore,
> > because we try to include the source for all flavors, and there are a lot
> > more flavors than there were when source ISOs started being built; yet
> we've
> > had zero bug reports from anyone asking to make these source ISOs more
> > useful.
> >
> > And as far as OEM preinstalled systems are concerned, well - those
> systems
> > use customized install media, so the "mainline" Ubuntu source ISOs don't
> > satisfy the "corresponding source" requirement there either.
> >
> > So I think in practice, the source ISOs are not useful in their current
> > state, haven't been for a long time, and therefore we should stop
> producing
> > them.
> >
> >
> > And as to whether there are costs in maintaining these: we basically only
> > build source ISOs once or twice every release cycle, so the machinery to
> do
> > so is very much the opposite of well-oiled.  After the 23.10.1 respin of
> the
> > Ubuntu Desktop images, I found that the source ISOs appeared to have
> become
> > un-published, and I found it incredibly difficult to even work out the
> > correct invocation of the commands that would allow me to re-publish the
> > existing ISOs.  debian-cd didn't even enter into it, I was just trying to
> > drive ubuntu-cdimage to re-publish the previously built images...
> >
> > Dropping the source ISO builds from the release process (and not having
> to
> > continue supporting them in the code) would be very nice.
> >
> > --
> > Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free
> OS
> > Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the
> world.
> > Ubuntu Developer
> https://www.debian.org/
> > slangasek at ubuntu.com
> vorlon at debian.org
> > --
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>
>
> --
> Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
>  Foundations Team
>  Tools Squad Engineering Manager
>  lukasz.zemczak at canonical.com
>  www.canonical.com
>
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