Hi Old-Polack,
That isn't what I am looking for. 
The apps that can be found on every major Linux distribution are not important. Most of the software running on nearly every Linux distribution came from FSF and is under one of the GNU GPL or LGPL licenses. I am looking for the origin of the core code that was/is used for the whole of PCLOS. Like the drake tools coming from Mandrake/Mandriva. The synaptic package manager coming from Debian. I know several flavors of Linux distributions were used to originally put PCLOS together. This is what I am looking for.
Thanks
Originally pretty much everything came from Mandrake except Synaptic, which didn't come from Debian, but from Conectiva, which was later merged/purchased by Mandrake, and the conjunction of the two names was used to form the trademark name "Mandriva", after losing a suit over the trademark "Mandrake".
From Wikipedia: "Synaptic development was funded by Conectiva, which asked Alfredo Kojima, then an employee, to write a graphical frontend for APT, continuing the work initiated with the creation of the APT RPM backend, apt-rpm. Eventually Synaptic became used in Conectiva's install process."
We use both apt-rpm and Synaptic, rather than Mandrake/Mandriva's urpm system.
Actually only a small part of any distribution comes from FSF, though a lot of it uses the GPL version 2 or 3 as a license. Linux itself is licensed under GPL 2 and certainly didn't come from FSF. Some of the code comes from BSD, and is licensed as such. KDE, our official DE, comes from KDE, also not FSF. The KDE Kickoff menu comes from KDE programmer Stephan Binner, but was first used on openSUSE 10.2, which caused many to think it was an openSUSE original. The Apache web server comes from Apache, and has its own license. If you want to know where applications come from, read the documentation, and licenses, that come with that application.
Mylivecd is a Texstar original, and is copyrighted as such, but licensed under GPL 2. Addlocale is a pinoc original, copyrighted to PCLinuxOS, and also licensed under GPL 2. Getvirtualbox and LO Manager are also from pinoc, copyrighted to Texstar, and released under GPL 2. Update-notifier was originally written by maik3531, with help from other community members, copyrighted to PCLinuxOS, and released under GPL 2. PCLinuxOS LiveUSB Creator comes from Just17 and Daniel, and is also licensed under GPL 2, and again, not from FSF, but home grown. All are exclusive to PCLinuxOS at the moment, but could be used by others, should they choose, because of the GPL 2 license.
If you really want to learn the history of an particular part of any distribution, spend a little time with Google. Use as keywords Linux and the application name. If there is a hit for a Wikipedia article, check it out. Most are fairly accurate as to timelines and original authors, and the distribution on which it first appeared, and whether it actually originated there, from one of its own developers, or not. The best source will be the actual maintainer's site, which usually has the complete history posted somewhere within.
The first release of a PCLinuxOS package, new to the repository, may, or may not, use a spec file originating from another distribution. If we do use such a spec file, and it has been modified to be used to create a PCLinuxOS package, which is necessary for most packages, it will be so noted in the change log that is a part of that file. The changelog may also show that the spec file originated elsewhere, and was modified for the distribution from which we obtained it. This is common practice, for all distributions using the RPM packaging system, as spec files tend to get very complicated, especially for large packages, so it's always easier to modify something that exists, than to start from scratch with every spec file for every application, and every version change. The package itself will be created from source code from the application maintainer's site, and built fresh by our packagers. We do not reuse other distribution's packages. If no spec file is otherwise available, our packagers will write one from scratch. This will also be noted in the change log. Once we have a spec file for an application, modified to fit our distribution, we will continue to reuse it, with whatever additional modifications are necessary, for each release of a newer version of said application. Each new modification will again be noted in the change log. If you are into serious digging, download some of our SRPMs, unpack them, and read the spec files.
Some packages do come directly from the creator of the application, usually when the package is proprietary, licensed for redistribution, and not available as source code. (think Adobe Reader, Flash, nVidia and AMD/ATI drivers, etc.) When such packages are requested, we do still test them for compatibility with our distribution, before adding them to our repo.
