Subject: Definitions of non-free and contrib

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 02:50 BST

non-free is the stuff that a CD distributor can't distribute without
checking the copyright individually, negotiating with authors, &c.
That means anything with a no commercial distribution clause, &c.

contrib is anything that doesn't meet any of Debian's policy
requirements for some other reason.  This includes, for example,
packages that don't come with source (perhaps because only the binary
is freely redistributable) or ones that aren't freely useable
(shareware and possibly guiltware falls into this category - it isn't
freely redistributable, but you may not necessarily use it without
restrictions.  Arguably when bison had the inconvenient parser licence
it ought to have gone in here.)  Other things might be packages that
have odd restrictions on modification by users, or ones that are very
peripheral to the project and which noone has time to support (most
orphaned packages should probably stay in the main distribution).

This means that we can distribute our netscape-installer, xforms,
abuse, &c &c &c in contrib, so that they get distributed on CDs.  This
is a good thing because we want our system to be as complete as
possible.  Putting the software in contrib will show up in dselect as
well as in other places, so that people can easily tell whether
they're using really-free or only-redistributable or
distribution-restricted packages.

Ian.