2.3. Copyright considerations

Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its distribution license in the file /usr/share/doc/package/copyright.

Every package must be accompanied by a verbatim copy of its copyright information, unless its distribution license explicitly permits this information to be excluded from distributions of binaries built from the source. In such cases, a verbatim copy of its copyright information should normally still be included, but need not be if creating and maintaining a copy of that information involves significant time and effort. 5

See Copyright information for further details.

We reserve the right to restrict files from being included anywhere in our archives if

• their use or distribution would break a law,

• there is an ethical conflict in their distribution or use,

• we would have to sign a license for them, or

• their distribution would conflict with other project policies.

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; in such a case they must go in non-free.

Packages whose copyright permission notices (or patent problems) do not even allow redistribution of binaries only, and where no special permission has been obtained, must not be placed on the Debian FTP site and its mirrors at all.

Note that under international copyright law (this applies in the United States, too), 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 license terms. However, this can be a politically difficult thing to do and you should ask for advice on the debian-legal mailing list first, as explained below.

When in doubt about a copyright, send mail to debian-legal@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”.