How do "they" pay for apt-get downloads?

pterandon · 07-23-2006, 09:45 PM

Suppose some day I wanted to become a millionaire developing and giving away free-as-in-beer linux distributions. Of course this is impossibly far away, so take it as a hypothetical.

What are the criteria for getting approved to have your own spinoff distro's users be allowed to download apps from say the debian repositories?

TigerOC · 07-24-2006, 03:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pterandon

What are the criteria for getting approved to have your own spinoff distro's users be allowed to download apps from say the debian repositories?

There are no criteria. If you develop your own distro and you are using the apt package system then merely adding a line in the /etc/apt/sources.lst pointing to the Debian repositories would do the job.

pixellany · 07-24-2006, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pterandon

What are the criteria for getting approved to have your own spinoff distro's users be allowed to download apps from say the debian repositories?

There are ways to make money in Linux and Open Source, but this is probably not one of them.
To make money in this new paradigm, you have to add value in any of several ways:

support and service
added SW packages--proprietary or open
sell complete systems tailored to a task
and more......

Matir · 07-24-2006, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TigerOC

There are no criteria. If you develop your own distro and you are using the apt package system then merely adding a line in the /etc/apt/sources.lst pointing to the Debian repositories would do the job.

That being said, if your distribution got REALLY popular, I'm fairly sure the Debian devs would nicely ask you to either provide your own apt repository for your distro, or provide a server to mirror the debian repositories. As the OP noted, there is a lot of bandwidth involved, though places like OSUOSL help out with things like that.