On Apr 15, 2009, at 9:12 AM, Simon J Mudd wrote: > > l...@madstop.com (Luke Kanies) writes: > >> I fear this discussion will quickly devolve into a recursive flame- >> fest, but it needs to be broached, so here we go. > > ... > > I'm a little surprised by the problem.
It's really only a problem because no policy has ever been set or maintained, and people have questions that aren't always clearly answered by the current situation. I just wanted to view this lack of policy, and the work we're going to have to do to rectify it, as an opportunity to pick the best route forward rather than just picking the easiest one. > > One way to perhaps make things easier is to break puppet into > independent chunks of code that do more clearly defined tasks, but > work together. Publish an interface which states how the components > talk together. Then you can add on extra comercial "functions" > modules which are paid for, or substitute existing "community modules" > with "non-free paid for 'better' versions. As the interface is defined > there's no need to worry about some of the issues you are discussing. > [snipped example external modules] > So perhaps a different way of looking at the problem is looking at > puppet slightly differently and making it easy to add or replace > components. Also to make sure that the interface to these various > components is able to be expanded reasonably transparently. That's hopefully something we're much closer to accomplishing with 0.25, but I fear we're still a ways out from transparent module replacement. And, actually, this module replacement exacerbates licensing concerns, rather than obviating them - I can't actually currently publish commercial modules that interface with Puppet. > > Looking at the problem this way doesn't change the licensing concerns > you are expressing but does make them much easier to manage than now. > > That might require a lot of initial work, and redesigning in the > short term > but potentially would make your life easier in the end. I think this is something we can realistically start looking at in 2010, probably - we've got bigger fish to fry right now, but I think we're going to get more and more interest in replacing subsystems with external modules, either commercial or just different. -- The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good. -- Robert Graves --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
