Debian Free Software Guidelines: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) are a set of guidelines that the Debian Project uses to determine whether a software license is free software license, which in turn is used to determine whether a piece of software can be included in the main, free software distribution of Debian.

The guidelines state these requirements:

• free redistribution
• inclusion of source code
• allowing for modifications and derived works to be made under the same license
• integrity of the author's source code (as a compromise for the likes of TeX)
• no discrimination against persons or groups
• no discrimination against fields of endeavor, like commercial use
• distribution of license, it needs to apply to all to whom the program is redistributed
• license must not be specific to Debian, basically a reiteration of the last point
• license must not contaminate other software

Example licenses are GPL, BSD, and Artistic.

The Open Source Definition was created from the DFSG.

The de facto interpreters of the DFSG are the members of the Debian legal group, the subscribers of the debian-legal mailing list. The Debian ftpmaster team makes final decisions in which section (free or non-free) to place a newly uploaded package, but they tend to confer with the debian-legal list with controversial cases.