I have started to create docker image which has the environment setup and OpenWrt imagebuilder extracted, ready for building the OpenWrt image right away.
I am planning to create an image for every target of every release start from 17.01.0 using the Docker hub autobuild to build the images. As the starting point, the images are published at https://hub.docker.com/r/rtau/openwrt-imagebuilder
I want to get your opinion on that.
v17 is EOL, and anything but the most-recent point release of maintained branches is, at this point, known to have severe security issues (kernel). In my opinion, providing these images is a disservice.
In my opinion, providing image-builder "runnable" is an in-between non-solution. I don't see the advantages of these Docker images over something like the turn-key unattended upgrade servers which have the attention of the core development team. They're not a full build system, so they won't help with anything that someone clinging to EOLed 4/32 devices could use.
You should also consider the licensing issues, as, by posting them publicly, you are definitely distributing copyrighted material. You would need to abide by the terms of license, which includes at least GPL, and likely BSD-style, MIT, and more. Note that requirements for GPL do not cover the requirements of other licenses.
Thanks for your opinion, let me build the latest release then.
The attended sysupgrade server looks great! However, it does not expose all the functions of imagebuilder, e.g. adding files to the image built, and adding 3rd party packages to the images. Do you think they would be useful?
That's a good point, and that's what I'm going to do after this docker image is mature enough.
Thanks for your reminder on the licensing issue, which I think would be similar to those custom images built and made available online, do you agree?
Perhaps more straightforward. I’ll never make bare images publicly available because of my interpretation of the licensing requirements.
A build system might be easier, but be aware of the requirements of all the involved licenses. Offering to supply the GPL requirements is, in my opinion, not sufficient for other licenses. Many require the copyright and license to be delivered with the work product. Some have additional requirements.
Please forgive me if I have misunderstood your words, the source code to build the images are provided for every build as a link to the exact commit on Docker hub, and there is a link to the Git repository as well, which is https://github.com/rtau-trial/docker-openwrt-imagebuilder
"Source code" offer is a GPL thing. Not all the contents are licensed with GPL.
The more permissive licenses often have one or more clauses alongs the lines of
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
(Highlight mine)
Andriod, for example, collects all of the licenses into a compressed file on every phone.