Debian Free Software Guidelines
The Debian Free Software Guidelines (English: , abbreviation) are the guidelines used by the Debian project to judge free software licenses to determine whether a software can be included in Debian. It is part of the Debian Community Contract.
Policy summary
- Free redistribution;
- Contains source code;
- Modifications and derivative works are permitted;
- The license may require that the integrity of the author's source code be maintained (as a compromise);
- Discrimination against persons or organizations is prohibited;
- Discriminatory uses are prohibited, for example, commercial uses cannot be prohibited;
- Rights must apply to all audiences to whom the program is redistributed;
- The license cannot be specific to Debian;
- The terms of the license must not contaminate other software.
GPL , BSD , and Artistic are examples of free licenses.
history
In July 1997, the Debian Free Software Guidelines were first published together with the Debian Community Contract. Ean Schuessler proposed the idea of providing a formal guarantee for a distribution 's licensing policy. The main authors of the guidelines were Bruce Perrance and a number of other Debian developers at the time.
Soon, open source definitions were written based on DFSG. DFSG emerged later than the Free Software Foundation 's definition of free software. After DFSG became the definition of open source, Richard Stallman , founder of the Free Software Foundation, felt the need to distinguish between free software and open source software in order to promote the definition of free software. The definition of free software was first published in the first version of the GNU Bulletin in 1986. It is worth noting that the "Four Freedoms" at the core of the free software definition were clearly produced before the drafting and promulgation of the DFSG, but the authors of the DFSG were not aware of it at the time.
In November 1998, Ian Jackson and others proposed some changes in the draft version 1.4, but these changes were not implemented in the official version. Jackson said the problem with the policy was the "loose language" and patchwork provisions.
As of 2011, the policy has not been revised. However, some changes have been made to the Community Contract that affect the policy-controlled portion of the release.
Debian's regular resolution (2004-003) modified the Community Contract. Proposer Andrew Suffield said:
"The rule is 'this resolution only changes the wording, not the spirit'. Most of the changes to the wording of the Community Compact better reflect its original intent and correct issues that were not considered when it was originally written."
However, the change from "We are committed to keeping the Debian GNU/Linux distribution as fully free software" to "We are committed to keeping the Debian system and all its components as free software" led to a substantial change from release manager Anthony Towns:
"Because it is no longer limited to 'software' and this decision was made by developers in the process of discussing how we should handle non-software content like documentation and firmware, I no longer support this policy resolution to exempt documentation, firmware etc., although the social contract has been revised to cover all these areas.”
This prompted another General Resolution 2004-004, in which the developers overwhelmingly decided to postpone modifications until the next version (development of which began a year later, in June 2005).
application
software
Most of the discussion about DFSG is on the debian-legal mailing list. When Debian developers first upload a software package to be included in Debian, the ftpmaster team checks the software license to determine whether it complies with the community contract. In case of difficulty, the team will discuss it on the debian-legal list.
non-software content
DFSG focuses on software , but the scope of the term itself is uncertain - some apply it to anything that can be represented as a bitstream, while a few believe it can only refer to computer programs. Furthermore, the existence of PostScript , executable scripts, source documents, etc., greatly confuses the second definition. So in an effort to cut through the confusion, in June 2004 the Debian project decided to apply the same guidelines explicitly to software documentation , multimedia data, and other content. Non-program content in Debian is strictly DFSG compliant starting with Debian 4.0 (released in April 2007).
GNU Free Documentation License
Many documents written by the GNU Project, Linux Documentation Project, etc. are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License , but the "invariant sections" contained therein do not comply with DFSG. This statement is the culmination of lengthy discussions and Standing Resolution 2006-001.
Due to the "Invariant Sections" of the GNU Free Documentation License, content under this license must be placed in an additional "non-free" package library and is not part of Debian.
multimedia files
Sometimes it is difficult to define what is the "source" of a multimedia file, such as whether an uncompressed image file is the source of a compressed image, or whether a 3D model before ray tracing is the source of the image it produces.
debian-legaltest
Subscribers to the debian-legal mailing list have created some tests to check whether the license is DFSG compliant. Common tests (found in the DFSG draft FAQ) are as follows:
- Desert island test. Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered computer. The need to make changes and make them public or send patches to certain places is simply not possible. This will continue even if he is able to receive but not send mail. So in order to be free, the software must be modifiable by the unfortunate castaway, and he must be able to share the modifications with his friends legally on the island.
- The Dissident Test. Consider a dissident in a totalitarian country who wants to share a modified piece of software with fellow dissidents, but does not wish to reveal to the government the identity of the modifier or the modification itself, or even the existence of the program. . Any release of source code modifications to anyone other than the recipient puts that person at risk. So for Debian, software freedom means there can be no over-release.
- Evil tentacle test. Imagine a software author hired by a large evil corporation and under its thumb trying to do the worst thing to the users of the program: make their lives miserable, make them stop using the program, expose them to legal liability , making programs unfree, finding their secrets, etc. The same thing can happen to a company that is acquired by a large corporation bent on destroying free software in order to maintain its monopoly and expand its evil empire. So for the sake of freedom, a license cannot even take away the necessary freedom from the software author.
See
References
- ^ Bruce Perrance. . debian-announce mailing list. 1997-07-04 [2013-08-29]. ( Archived from the original on 2007-10-27).
- ^ . Debian. 2004-04-26 [2013-08-29]. ( Archived from the original on 1999-04-17).
- ^ Richard Stallman . . GNU website. [2013-08-29]. ( Archived from the original on 2016-08-17).
- ^ . [2013-08-29]. (Original content archived on 2018-10-11).
- ^ Bruce Perens: " when I had to write license guidelines for Debian, the Four Freedoms document was unknown . "
- ^ Ian Jackson: Draft new DFSG ( page archive backup , stored in), debian-devel mailing list
- ^ . [2013-08-29]. ( Archived from the original on 2004-06-06).
- ^ Andrew Suffield: Re: Candidate social contract amendments (part 1: editorial) (3rd draft) ( page archive backup , stored in), debian-vote mailing list
- ^ Anthony Towns: Social Contract GR's effect on Sarge , debian-devel mailing list
- ^ . [2013-08-29]. ( Archived from the original on 2004-05-14).
- ^ . [2013-08-29]. (Original content archived on 2010-02-01).
- ^ . [2013-08-29]. ( Archived from the original on 2004-04-09).
external link
- Debian Community Contract and Free Software Guidelines ( page archive backup , stored at)
- List of licenses currently accepted by Debian ( page archive backup , stored in)
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