[4151] in Release_7.7_team
Locker software and stand alone OpenAFS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Fri Dec 12 18:41:44 2003
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
Cc: owls@mit.edu, release-team@mit.edu, openafs-release@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <1070086639.14143.96.camel@error-messages.mit.edu>
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Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 18:41:37 -0500
At Owls on 1 December we discussed third party software, and what to do
about the issues:
Software in lockers might depend on Athena-installed tools, and
so quit working in a non-Athena environment.
Software in lockers might be licensed "Athena only".
It was decided that software distribution is an effort in its own right,
and that it would be inappropriate to try to solve "on the margin" from
within the OpenAFS Software Release efforts. The OpenAFS Software
Release effort is appropriately scoped as a mechanism to deliver file
sharing that others might utilize for distribution of software.
Up to now "locker" software implied the availability of certain tools
and the entitlement to "membership in Athena" as a licensable entity.
To move forward from this assumption, locker software startup scripts
are going to need to be reviewed and possibly modified by their
respective maintainers.
Software that doesn't depend on Athena tools, and that isn't restricted
will, as customers expect, just run.
Software that is licensed "Athena-only" will do a simple test to see if
the software is being run on a system that has Athena installed. This
is not a technological enforcement mechanism. It's intended as a way of
being explicit, but not getting deep into an arms race for technological
enforcement. As software licenses go up for renewal, licensing terms
that are a better fit for MIT will be negotiated instead of
"Athena-only". Alex Prengel will take care of this class of software.
Software with dependencies on Athena-installed tools should be looked at
to see if the dependencies can be removed. However, many of those
dependencies are there for a good reason (for example, getting a version
of perl known to work for the software). But that work is ALSO outside
the scope of the OpenAFS Release efforts. That work should be done by
whoever takes care of the particular locker.
Software that depends on Athena-installed tools should test up-front to
see if those tools can be expected to be found. The recommended test is
for the existence of the file "/etc/athena version". If the test fails,
the start-up scripts should quit with an explicit error message stating
that Athena-installed tools are required.
Summary:
The issue has been noted, and is being dealt with in a pragmatic way.
Nobody is being asked to solve the whole thing. An explicit, and
incremental solution will make things better in an ongoing basis.
-wdc
