Debian GNU/Linux Social Contract

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common
cause to create a free operating system.  This is the "social contract"
we offer to the free software community.

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"Social Contract" with the Free Software Community

  1. Debian Will Remain 100% Free Software

     We promise to keep the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution entirely free
     software. As there are many definitions of free software, we include
     the guidelines we use to determine if software is "free" below. We will
     support our users who develop and run non-free software on Debian, but
     we will never make the system depend on an item of non-free software.

  2. We Will Give Back to the Free Software Community

     When we write new components of the Debian system, we will license them
     as free software. We will make the best system we can, so that free
     software will be widely distributed and used. We will feed back
     bug-fixes, improvements, user requests, etc. to the "upstream" authors
     of software included in our system.

  3. We Won't Hide Problems

     We will keep our entire bug-report database open for public view at all
     times. Reports that users file on-line will immediately become visible
     to others.

  4. Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software

     We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
     community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We
     will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
     kinds of computing environment. We won't object to commercial software
     that is intended to run on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to
     create value-added distributions containing both Debian and commercial
     software, without any fee from us. To support these goals, we will
     provide an integrated system of high-quality, 100% free software, with
     no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds of use.

  5. Programs That Don't Meet Our Free-Software Standards

     We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of programs that
     don't conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. We have created
     "contrib" and "non-free" areas in our FTP archive for this software.
     The software in these directories is not part of the Debian system,
     although it has been configured for use with Debian. We encourage CD
     manufacturers to read the licenses of software packages in these
     directories and determine if they can distribute that software on their
     CDs. Thus, although non-free software isn't a part of Debian, we
     support its use, and we provide infrastructure (such as our
     bug-tracking system and mailing lists) for non-free software packages.

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The Debian Free Software Guidelines

  1. Free Redistribution

     The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from
     selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate
     software distribution containing programs from several different
     sources. The license may not require a royalty or other fee for such
     sale.

  2. Source Code

     The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in
     source code as well as compiled form.

  3. Derived Works

     The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow
     them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the
     original software.

  4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

     The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified
     form _only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with
     the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time.
     The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from
     modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a
     different name or version number from the original software. (This is a
     compromise. The Debian group encourages all authors to not restrict any
     files, source or binary, from being modified.)

  5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

     The license must not discriminate against any person or group of
     persons.

  6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

     The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in
     a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the
     program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic
     research.

  7. Distribution of License

     The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the
     program is redistributed without the need for execution of an
     additional license by those parties.

  8. License Must Not Be Specific to Debian

     The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's
     being part of a Debian system. If the program is extracted from Debian
     and used or distributed without Debian but otherwise within the terms
     of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is
     redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in
     conjunction with the Debian system.

  9. License Must Not Contaminate Other Software

     The license must not place restrictions on other software that is
     distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license
     must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium
     must be free software.

 10. Example Licenses

     The "GPL", "BSD", and "Artistic" licenses are examples of licenses that
     we consider "free".

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Bruce Perens wrote the first draft of this document and refined it using the
comments of the Debian developers during a month-long e-mail conference in
June 1997. He later removed the Debian-specific references from the Debian
Free Software Guidelines to create "The Open Source Definition".

Other organizations may derive from and build on this document. Please give
credit to the Debian project if you do.
