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Chapter 13

Redistributing Debian GNU/Linux in a

commercial product

13.1 Can I make and sell Debian CDs?

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.

Also, we will publish a list of CD manufacturers who donate money, software, and time to the

Debian project, and we will encourage users to buy from manufacturers who donate, so it is

good advertising to make donations.

13.2 Can Debian be packaged with non free software?

Yes. While all the main components of Debian are free software, we provide a non free direc 

tory for programs that are not freely redistributable.

CD manufacturers may be able to distribute the programs we have placed in that directory,

depending on the license terms or their private arrangements with the authors of those soft 

ware packages. CD manufacturers can also distribute the non free software they get from other

sources on the same CD. This is nothing new: free and commercial software are distributed on

the same CD by many manufacturers now. Of course we still encourage software authors to

release the programs they write as free software.