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Chapter 2

The Debian Archive

The Debian GNU/Linux system is maintained and distributed as a collection of packages. Since

there are so many of them (currently well over 6000), they are split into sections and given

priorities to simplify the handling of them.

The effort of the Debian project is to build a free operating system, but not every package we

want to make accessible is free in our sense (see the Debian Free Software Guidelines, below),

or may be imported/exported without restrictions. Thus, the archive is split into the sections

based on their licenses and other restrictions.

The aims of this are:

  to allow us to make as much software available as we can

  to allow us to encourage everyone to write free software, and

  to allow us to make it easy for people to produce CD ROMs of our system without vio 

lating any licenses, import/export restrictions, or any other laws.

The main and the non US/main sections together form the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

Packages in the other sections are not considered to be part of the Debian distribution, although

we support their use and provide infrastructure for them (such as our bug tracking system and

mailing lists). This Debian Policy Manual applies to these packages as well.

2.1 The Debian Free Software Guidelines

The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) form our definition of  free software . These are:

Free Redistribution The license of a Debian component may not restrict any party from sell 

ing or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution

containing programs from several different sources. The license may not require a roy 

alty or other fee for such sale.

Source Code The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source

code as well as compiled form.