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