Debian Free Software Guidelines

The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in the main, free software distribution of Debian. Debian had by 2003 collected over seven and a half thousand software packages compliant with the above guidelines.

Related Topics:
Debian - Free software license - Free software - 2003 - Software package

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The guidelines state these requirements:

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• free redistribution
• inclusion of source code
• allowing for modifications and derived works to be made under the same license
• integrity of the author's source code (as a compromise for the likes of TeX)
• no discrimination against persons or groups
• no discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use
• distribution of license, it needs to apply to all to whom the program is redistributed
• license must not be specific to Debian, basically a reiteration of the last point
• license must not contaminate other software

Example licenses are GPL, BSD, and Artistic.

Related Topics:
GPL - BSD - Artistic

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The Open Source Definition was created from the DFSG.

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Most discussion about the DFSG happens on the debian-legal mailing list. When the maintainers of the individual packages first upload packages into the Debian archive, the Debian ftpmaster team evaluates the software licenses and decides whether they are in accordance with the DFSG. The ftpmasters tend to confer with the debian-legal list with controversial cases.

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Debian Free Software Guidelines: debian-legal tests for DFSG compliance ►