Re: I am the RD of ASUS, want to confirm the Debian license
刘欢 <appleeatworms@gmail.com> writes:
> Sorry to use a private email,The company's mailbox can not send mail
> to @ list.debian.org
Sorry to learn of that misconfiguration in your IT system. I hope your
company's IT department can correct that fault.
> We are developing a laptop test software, hoping to use Debian as the
> operating environment, and pre-installed in the user's computer.
> According to Debian lisence
You probably know, but to be clear: There is no one “Debian license”.
The many packages comprising the Debian system have myriad copyright
holders, and those holders each grant license only in the specific work
in that package.
> we do not have to pay for it, just open the Debian source code we use.
It is true that all of the different licenses, granted in the many
different packages, have an explicit freedom in common: The freedom to
redistribute the work you received, with or without modification, under
the same license conditions as you received it.
There are other conditions and grants in various packages, but that
common grant of freedom is the one I think you are referring to.
> But whether we need open source our test software.I did not find the
> relevant instructions on the official website.
The instructions are not special to Debian. If you want to redistribute
a work derived from another work, that action is goverend by copyright
law and you must obtain permission somehow.
For free-software works, like all the ones that comprise the Debian
system, the freedom is explicitly granted to redistribute the derived
work with the same license conditions that you received the work.
> We do not want to open source our software, because it will involve the
> interests of some third-party vendors.
That is a shame, because it is against the interests of software freedom
and the interests of software users. Please grant recipients of the
Debian system – with or without your modifications – the same grant of
license that you received.
--
\ “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” |
`\ —David Hume |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
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