On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, Shlomi Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Don't like this? choose a different distro. Mandrake, Redhat and Debian, .. > Some of the software contained in those distributions is not free (e.g: > Netscape 4.72). But the distribution as a whole is.
I don't know about Mandrake/Red Hat, but this is simply not true for Debian. The Debian operating system *does not* include any non-DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines) Free software. If such software allows redistribution, Debian allows it to be uploaded to non-free as a service to our users. However, this does *not* mean that it somehow becomes a part of the Debian operating system. Only what is in main and main/non-US is a part of the Debian operating system. Here is a quote from the Debian Social Contract, available at http://www.debian.org/social_contract ''' 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. ... 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. ''' The DFSG is available at the same URL. ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
