Free beer and free speech

One of the continuously recurring themes in Debian is the topic of free software.

Efforts to ensure the freedom of software distributed with Debian enjoy a simi-larly high priority as users of the operating system. The Free Software Foundation identifies four kinds of freedom¹⁶, namely the freedom to

run the program, for any purpose.

study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.

redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.

to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

For the purpose of the following discussion, these types of freedom can be con-densed to produce two categories of software:

The first category includes software which may be copied and used without payment. The distinction is between commercial and non-commercial providers, that is, between those looking to make money off the software and those who make it available to people without requiring a mite in return. Software must be “free as in free beer” to satisfy this requirement of freeness. Note that it is acceptable to charge for the distribution of free software, but paid copies are governed by the same rules as their free counterparts and may be redistributed for free.

that can be freely used, copied, studied, modified, and redistributed by the user.

This applies to the freedom the user obtains along with the software. Here, the distinction is between proprietary and non-proprietary software, that is be-tween software whose internal workings are protected as intellectual property, and software available to everyone without restrictions. Such software is com-monly referred to as “libre” (which is the French adjective alongside the noun

“freedom”). To comply with this definition, software must be “free as in free speech.”

These two definitions may well collide. Many programmes are available at no charge, but the software may only be used, not reverse engineered or distributed in modified form. On the other hand, some companies licence software source code to paying users, but forbid redistribution in non-binary form.

Despite popular belief, free software is not the same as software developed un-der the open source model. When the term “open source” was coined, it applied

16http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

to the same software as the term “free software.” A difference started to evolve between the two classes when the supporters of free software increasingly began to emphasise the philosophy behind the freedom of software, while the followers of open source software pragmatically harped on the improved development cycle and cheaper costs.

While open source software is generally available at no cost, it is not always free. A prominent example isqmail, a mail transfer agent. While the source code of qmail is readily available, the author chose to restrict the distribution of modifications in binary form, a restriction that contravenes the principles of free software and violates the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)¹⁷. Free software is a subset of open source software. More specifically, free software is always open source, but open source software may well be non-free.

Free software is, however, not totally free of constraints - it is governed by the licence and copyright statement. The software licence aims to give users the flex-ibility to put the software to productive use, while protecting the rights of the authors, who can carefully but freely choose the licences to govern the release of their works. The copyright statement serves to protect the rights of the author, who chooses the licence and is free to modify it (within the terms of the licence)¹⁸.

Debian and free software

Debian takes an extraordinary and somewhat radical approach to free software.

One of the fundamental documents of the Debian project is the DFSG; it regulates the availability of software in Debian according to its licence.

The Debian software pool is separated into three sections, sorted in decreasing order of the freedom of the software they contain¹⁹:

main Themainarchive contains software in full compliance with the DFSG. Fur-thermore, any package in mainmay only depend on other packages also available inmain.

17Sinceqmailis in violation with the FHS in many ways, it needed to be amended to comply with the FHS for installaton on the Debian system. The licence forbids distribution of a modified version in binary form, so Debian cannot provide the package in its archive. Instead, the maintainer had to create theqmail-srcpackage, which can compile and build theqmailpackage on the user’s system.

18Obviously, if an author releases a piece of software under a free licence and then later chooses to commercialise the product, any code previously available continues to remain available under the free licence. Only software in thepublic domainis completely unrestricted and does not have an owner.

19The gory details of rules governing the Debian archive are available as part of the policy manual:

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html

contrib

Packages incontribare free themselves, but depend²⁰on software available incontribornon-free. In addition, packages incontribmight also depend on software that has not or cannot be packaged. Please note that packages incontribare not actively supported. A maintainer may well support the software, but you should not rely on it. Also, the security team does not tend to thecontribarchive.

non-free

Finally, software innon-freeis not in accordance with the DFSG. As regards support,non-freeis the same ascontrib: the archive is not officially sup-ported, and security updates are not provided by the security team.

Thenon-USis a relic of the times of US American export laws, mainly related to cryptographic software. After the export restrictions were relaxed, Debian moved the software fromnon-USto the three official archives (see above), according to their freeness. At this time of writing, only a single package remains innon-US, and the archive is likely to be removed in the near future.

Every Debian package installs the licence(s) and copyright statement(s) governing the software it contains in/usr/share/doc/<packagename>/copyright. In addi-tion, you can find discussions of the DFSG-freeness of common licences online²¹. Software that meets the requirements of the DFSG is commonly referred to as DFSG-free. Software which does not qualify for inclusion in themainarchive is callednon-free.

The importance of free beer

I hardly need to argue the importance of free beer. Beer is an essential nutrient²², and if it is available for free, then all the better.

Believe it or not, the same holds for software. While in most industrialised parts of the globe, new computer hardware comes with an operating system and pro-grammes for basic needs, this is not the case in a large number of less developed countries. Furthermore, the software accompanying new hardware frequently only covers the bare essentials and additional software must be purchased to accomo-date the needs of users or corporations. Standard software prices are typically astronomical in these areas. Unless users have no issue with unauthorised copying of software, they depend on operating systems like Debian, which provide a com-plete environment at no charge, and will continue to be available in the future.

Even if the members of the Debian project officially started to charge money for

20A dependency here is defined as the union of the relationsDepends,Recommends, and Build-Depends, and thus includes dependencies for both running and building the software.

21http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?DFSGLicences

22I was born in Munich and baptised in the brew (no, my parents did not actually dump me in beer.)

their work, the terms of the DFSG ensure that anyone else can continue distributing (and developing) Debian for free.

Debian is committed to servicing every single user independent of background or financial status. The Social Contract promises that the entire collection of software available in the Debian (main) archive will be usable without a charge. Furthermore, Debian tries to maintain every software with respect to security problems.

The importance of free speech

The Debian archive has been partitioned into the aforementioned sections for the benefit of the Debian users. Themainsection comprises about 97% of the Debian archive and provides everything needed to run a production system. Therefore, for most users, it is quite sufficient to use only themainsection of theAPTsources to install and maintain their systems. On such systems, the user is free to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute the software without restrictions²³.

By using only software from themainarchive, the user can stay on the safe side legally, to the best of Debian’s knowledge and efforts, no matter where the soft-ware is used. Debiansargeinstalls only components frommain, if packages from contribornon-freeare needed, the user has to modify/etc/apt/sources.list ac-cordingly and explicitly request their installation.

The additional ability to use Debian for whatever purpose a user thinks fit is equally important. Debian does not allow any discrimination of persons, groups, or fields of endeavour. Debian may be put to use by anyone for anything, even in morally debateable domains, such as genetic research or warfare. Debian does not attempt to define what is acceptable and what is not because it would put a limit on the freedom of its users.

The importance of free software

Free software also prevents the so-calledvendor lock-in, a situation in which the user is dependent on a vendor or manufacturer for certain parts of a product and a switch to a different product would encompass unbearable costs. Since Debian’s main archive is not specific to Debian, anything you use on a Debian system can also be used on other systems with similar capabilities. Using Debian therefore does not mean being dependent on Debian²⁴. The DFSG states that any software in mainis licenced for free use, and that this licence is not specific to Debian. In short, any package within Debian’smainarchive is also freely usable outside of Debian

23This does not always hold. For example, some software requires modifications to be distributed alongside the original source, rather than properly integrated with the source code. While Debian does not advocate such restrictions, it tolerates them, as stated in the fourth clause of the DFSG (see appendix F). Therefore, before applying modifications to software with the intent to redistribute the modified version, it is a good idea to check/usr/share/doc/<packagename>/copyright, which every package must provide.

24Unless, of course, you start to appreciate the “Debian Way” and become addicted.

under identical terms. However, it is important to keep in mind that Debian is not a legal office, nor does it have professional legal advocates. The above is therefore not a guarantee. Nevertheless, violations are not ignored and the developers will take appropriate action to maintain the freedom of themainarchive to the best of their abilities.

Free software (and therefore the entiremainarchive) also provides for indepen-dence from the respective authors. If a project is moving in a direction unfavourable to you, you are free to team up with others and create a forked edition. As an ob-vious example, all of Debian’s own administrative utilities, such as the package management system, are available for use outside of Debian²⁵. Thus, if you ever get sick and tired of Debian but cannot imagine life withoutAPT, you are free to go and take it with you.

Free software will not die. This means that everything you apt-get installwill persist. You can spend time learning every detail of a software, and you have access to the same means as everybody else to keep it working or even improve it.

When building systems, you know that you can always reinstall, that the software itself will always be available. Its development may stop (forcing you to possibly fix bugs yourself), but it will always be free software.

Finally, free software packages constitute a software ecosystem. The Debianmain archive boosts the potential of the Unix principle of modularised toolkits. Small (or not so small) pieces of software serve to provide services which are directly or indi-rectly usable by other software, without imposing licence restrictions thanks to the DFSG. This can lead to phenomena such as co-evolution and shortened maturation cycles, generally yielding flexible and modular solutions with a comparatively short amount of development.