Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 14:36:52 -0700
From: Erik Ratcliffe <erik@calderasystems.com>
To: users@lists.calderasystems.com
Subject: It's time for me to pass the baton to someone else...

Howdy, folks...

This message is for those wonderful individuals who spend their free time
building RPM packages for OpenLinux (you know who you are).  

Effective immediately, I am no longer "controlling" the routing of incoming
RPM packages for our FTP site's "contrib" area.  This honor has been passed
along to an IS person we all affectionately refer to as "ftpmaster".  It
makes a lot more sense to have a generic user handle things like this
anyway; with the ftpmaster account, if the baton needs to be passed again in
the future, we won't have to send out a message like this one to make
everything "right".

Beyond this change, everything else is business as usual.  Continue to
upload packages as you see fit.

I'll take this opportunity to make a few generic requests in an effort to
make the new guy's life a bit easier:

	1) If you use existing source code RPM packages as a "base" for
	   your new RPM packages and end up altering them, be sure to 
	   change the packager name to your own.  An indication of who
	   originally built the package would be nice, of course, but
	   try not to make it look like the original packager made
	   your changes.  No need holding innocent people responsible
	   for possible problems in the re-packaging of their RPMs.  

	2) If you are contributing a set of RPM packages that built
	   without modification on OpenLinux, somehow indicate (maybe
	   in the description) that the package was rebuilt for 
	   OpenLinux.  In my opinion, because the .spec file was not
	   altered for OpenLinux builds, the original packager should
	   still be credited for his/her work. 

	3) Please quadruple check the licensing of the package you're
	   uploading, making sure it's 100% legal for us (Caldera) to
	   distribute them.  Things like Sun's newest JDK, Aladdin's
	   newest version of ghostscript, or Xanim codecs are question-
	   able as re-distributable items.  They're appreciated, but
	   their licensing is vague when it comes to user-contributed
	   packages.  It's best to leave those at home.

	4) When you upload packages, please send a message to the
	   ftpmaster address here at Caldera Systems indicating what
	   you've done.  A simple "Hey, I just uploaded _____ packages
	   to the incoming directory" would suffice.

That's all!  Just figured I'd pass this info along.  

-- 
| (o)(o) Erik Ratcliffe, Caldera Systems |   Technical support will   |
|  \oo/      erik@calderasystems.com     |  only be provided through  |
|  =\/=   http://www.calderasystems.com  | support@calderasystems.com |

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