Re: Retailing

[Chris Waters <xtifr@debian.org>]

On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 04:56:00PM -0000, Kieran Lloyd wrote:
> Dear Sirs,

> I am considering selling some home made PC's on Ebay, the thing is I
> want to sell these pre-installed with Debian Linux. Would Debian have
> any argument with this? I will obviously be advertising that the Pc's
> have Debian installed however I will not be charging for it I would only
> be charging a mark up on my hardware. Please advise if this would be
> acceptable.

You can do this.  You can even charge for the software (whatever you
think the market will bear, given that the software is freely
available), or for the service of installing it.  HOWEVER, for MUCH
(although not all) of the software, you MUST either provide the source
code along with the system, or must provide a written offer (good for
three years) to provide the source code to ANYONE who asks.

See the GNU General Public License at /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL
on any Debian system or at <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html> for
details.

The easiest way to do this is to include CDRs with the source of any
packages you have preinstalled.  This, by the way, is a good excuse
for adding a couple of euros/dollars (or the equivalent in your local
currency) to the price.

Note that we (the Debian Project) are mostly (re)packaging various
Free/Libre/Open Source programs found on the Internet, and are not
responsible for setting or enforcing the license terms.  Only a couple
of components (such as the package tools dpkg and apt) are copyrighted
and licensed by Debian itself.

-- 
Chris Waters           |  Pneumonoultra-        osis is too long
xtifr@debian.org       |  microscopicsilico-    to fit into a single
or xtifr@speakeasy.net |  volcaniconi-          standalone haiku