On 13/08/15 07:29, Rohnan Donohue wrote:
My name is Rohnan, and I am a secondary student in Victoria,
Australia. I am writting to you to please ask for express permission to
host Debian products on a website I am currently producing in one of my
classes. This website will host only 'freeware' comprised mostly of
'.iso' files, although I am asking permission I have not yet published
this site but hope to have it done within 2-3 months.
Hi Rohnan,
You can freely redistribute Debian products without asking for express
permission. Permission has already been granted in the form of copyright
licences which allow recipients of Debian, and of the individual
software packages in Debian, to engage in further copying and
redistribution.
The one thing you do need to do is make sure that when you redistribute
Debian, you make the source code available as well as the binary
packages. A lot of the software in Debian - including the Linux kernel -
is released under versions 2 and/or 3 of the GNU General Public License,
which require that anyone redistributing binaries also make the source
code for those binaries available.
The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ, Chapter 14, contains the following statement
(which is about CDs, but has broader applicability):
"Go ahead. You do not need permission to distribute anything we have
released, so that you can master your CD as soon as the beta-test ends.
You do not have to pay us anything. Of course, all CD manufacturers must
honor the licenses of the programs in Debian. For example, many of the
programs are licensed under the GPL, which requires you to distribute
their source code."
https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/ch-redistrib.en.html#s-sellcds
