IPS/pkg :: A business friendly software distribution and packaging system
I just noticed this change to pkg in OpenSolaris. These functionality additions allow for the conditional display and acceptance of software licenses on package install for the IPS system.
Why is this significant? Because it opens up the package system for commercial software distributors. If you couple this with the IPS repository functionality and require keys for the repo you have subscription updates, and license management covered!
Your software purchase and install path looks like:
Go to web site -> do they support opensolaris -> yes -> buy -> add repo -> pkg install software
Update your software from now until forever:
pkg install software or
pkg image-update
I really don’t like having to run custom installers from vendors that run scripts that do all kinds of stuff to the system and also install package sets. If the software packaging system is opened up to vendors we can manage our open source and commercial applications from one place.
I would also like to see open source projects build their own package repositories for all the major distributions. This would allow us to stay current with some software packages who’s development out paces the release cycles of the enterprise distros (RHEL, Ubuntu LTS).