discontinuing source ISOs?

Dimitri John Ledkov dimitri.ledkov at canonical.com
Wed Jan 31 00:12:05 UTC 2024 

Please proceed deleting it.

Our online & cold storage are covering all possible requirements needed.

On Wed, 31 Jan 2024 at 00:05, Michael Hudson-Doyle
<michael.hudson at canonical.com> wrote:
>
> 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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>
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Dimitri

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