Debian policy manual - chapter 2
Package copyright
Please study the copyright of your submission carefully and
understand it before proceeding. If you have doubts or questions,
please ask.
The aims of the policy detailed below are:
- That any user be able to rebuild any package in the official Debian
distribution from the original source plus our patches.
- That we make available in our packaging formats as much software as we
can.
- That it be easy for people to make CDROMs of our distribution without
violating copyrights.
2.1 Main Distribution Section
All packages in the Debian distribution proper must be freely useable,
modifiable and redistributable in both source and binary
form.[1] It must be possible for
anyone to distribute and use modified source code and their own
compiled binaries, at least when they do so as part of a Debian
distribution.
2.2 non-free Section
Packages
- whose copyright permission notices (or patent problems) do not allow
distribution and copying for profit, without restriction on the amount
charged, or
- where distribution is restricted according to the medium used, or
- where the distributor must ask any kind of special permission of the
authors, or
- with other onerous conditions,
may only be placed in the semi-supported non-free section of the
Debian FTP archives. This is important so that CDROM manufacturers
can distribute Debian without having to check the copyright of each
package individually, simply by leaving out the contents of the
non-free area; CDROM distributors are encouraged, though, to check the
copyrights on programs in non-free individually and include as many as
they can.
2.3 contrib Section
Packages
- whose copyright permission notices (or patent problems) allow only
distribution of compiled binaries (and thus of which only binaries are
available), or
- where the source code which may be distributed is not the complete
source code required to compile the program (ie, the program cannot be
compiled using only packages in the main Debian distribution), or
- which depend for their use on non-free or contrib
packages[2], or
- allow free use only for a trial period (shareware), or
- are demonstration programs lacking vital functionality (crippleware),
or
- are only installer-packages which require the user to supply a
separate file to be installed, or
- which are buggy and no longer maintained, but are preserved for
backward compatibility, or
- which fail to meet some other policy requirements,
may only be placed in the semi-supported contrib section of the Debian
FTP archives (unless they need to be in non-free - see above).
2.4 Further Copyright Considerations
Programs whose authors encourage the user to make donations are fine
for the main distribution, provided that the authors do not claim that
not donating is immoral, unethical, illegal or something similar;
otherwise they must go in contrib (or non-free, if even distribution
is restricted by such statements).
Packages whose copyright permission notices (or patent problems) do
not allow redistribution even of only binaries, and where no special
permission has been obtained, cannot be placed on the Debian FTP site and
its mirrors at all.
Note that under international copyright law[3] no distribution or
modification of a work is allowed without an explicit notice saying
so. Therefore a program without a copyright notice is
copyrighted and you may not do anything to it without risking being
sued! Likewise if a program has a copyright notice but no statement
saying what is permitted then nothing is permitted.
Many authors are unaware of the problems that restrictive copyrights
(or lack of copyright notices) can cause for the users of their
supposedly-free software. It is often worthwhile contacting such
authors diplomatically to ask them to modify their terms generally, or
specially for Debian. However, this is a politically difficult thing
to do and you should ask for advice on debian-devel first.
When in doubt, send mail to debian-devel@lists.debian.org. Be
prepared to provide us with the copyright statement. Software covered
by the GPL, public domain software and BSD-like copyrights are safe;
be wary of the phrases `commercial use prohibited' and `distribution
restricted'.
Every package submission must be accompanied by verbatim copy of
its copyright (with the exceptions of public domain packages and those
covered by the UCB BSD licence or the GNU GPL or LGPL; in these cases
simply indicate which is appropriate). This information must be
included in a file installed by the binary package - see /usr/doc/
package/copyright
, subsection 3.2.6.
Debian policy manual
- Copyright ©1996 Ian Jackson.
Contents; abstract; next; back.
version 2.1.2.2 (dpkg 1.4.0.8), 3 February 1997
Ian Jackson ijackson@gnu.ai.mit.edu
revised: David A. Morris bweaver@debian.org