Re: Definition of "product" for the purposes of the LSB

On Dec 30,  1:38pm in "Re: [lsb-discuss] De", Jeff Licquia wrote:
> Doug Beattie wrote:
> > When I read this, (and granted I have not taken a lot of time to think
> > about it), I had questions pop into my mind about if the third party
> > could really certify the product and be expected to stand behind it.
> > If one looks at this from a legal support viewpoint, if the third party
> > had to rely on things not changing under them by those supplying the
> > original distribution, could they or should they be held accountable.
> > Certification currently requires the party that does the certification
> > stand behind their runtime environment and fix problems if and when
> > they are encountered. It seems this could have the pontential of
> > creating a lot more problems to police.
> 
> Perhaps this could be remedied with some form of update committment. 
> When the underlying distribution changes, the third party would consider 
> that a maintenance update and release updated supplemental media.
> 
We need to be clear here that the underlying distribution would not
itself be an LSB certified product -- the actions required if that changes
would depend in some part on what exactly is certified -- and how that is
described, for example,  a particular point release or a range of releases
including maintenance updates are two different levels of committment,
the latter with an ongoing development cycle to ensure you stay in sync.

The organization certifying the  whole product has to assume the warranty
of conformance regardless of where the component parts are sourced.

> If the product were defined as "the FooBar Linux version 5.0 release 3 
> plus the FooBar LSB supplement", it's possible that one could avoid the 
> issues regarding upstream updates as well; FooBar could release version 
> 5.0 release 4, but we would continue distributing r3 with our 
> supplemental CD (for a time, at any rate).
> 
> > I'm not saying one way or another how I will end up deciding on this
> > question, just that there should be some careful thought go into its
> > consideration.
> 
> Yes, which is why I'm asking ahead of time for advice.  Obviously, a 
> complete fork would be safer; it would also be a considerably greater 
> amount of work, which is why the "supplemental media" option appeals to 
> me.  But if the supplement isn't acceptable, then it's pointless to 
> waste time on it.
> 
I think for an initial release the supplemental media could work, but that
some thought has to be given for how to manage the warranty of
conformance for any updates to that initial release including
bugfix/maintenance/security patches etc that are less than a full
point release.

In the example above you would also need to provide evidence of
permission to use the third party name "Foobar Linux" in the certified 
product name.

I think there may also be concerns around the naming of the
"product" - to avoid possible passing off of the underlying product
as being LSB certified that would need to be addressed.

regards
Andrew