On Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 12:55:25AM -0600, Wes Peters wrote:
> For very good reason, Jordan is no longer in a position to do this. We
> as the FreeBSD community need to decide what we're going to do about
> this, and we need to decide before another disastrous release cycle
> happens. WRS does not have any legal standing to create such a closed
> and exclusive distribution arrangement, FreeBSD is *our* product, not
> theirs. *WE* need to decide what *WE* want to do about this, and move
> along in an orderly fashion, or *WE* will lose the ability to do any-
> thing about it.
>
> Specifically, we need a Product Manager who can shepherd FreeBSD through
> the release process, and coordinate with CD-ROM distributor(s) who are
> interested in producing and selling CDs, DVDs, etc of the "official"
> FreeBSD distribution.
Something that wasn't clear to me from Jordan's message to -announce
is whether he will continue to be the FreeBSD Release Engineer. If he
is, then whatever Jordan churns out for 4.4 is the official product.
If not, then the FreeBSD committers need to find a new release
engineer to do that job, and WRS can package up those bits or make
their own distribution as they see fit. There are still people like
John Baldwin at WRS who have been learning the release engineering
ropes over the past few releases, who could feasibly coordinate on
that side.
Concomitant to this is the need to transfer the FreeBSD trademark from
WRS to the FreeBSD Foundation (which should be possible now that the
latter actually has legal standing), which is apparently going to
happen but something we need to make sure *does* happen in the next
month or two.
Kris
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