Ubuntu license agreement

[Christofer C. Bell]

On 6/1/07, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2007 at 01:08:26AM +0300, Vsevolod Krishchenko wrote:
>
> > Is it possible to write Ubuntu LA ("User is legally free to copy, modify,
> > share and redistribute this Software on any number of computers. See licence
> > of Ubuntu packages for detailed information")? Words on Ubuntu CD come close
> > to such LA, still they are not marked as LA and it is not included in Ubuntu
> > itself (maybe I have missed something)?
>
> If you're free to use the software, there's no need for a license
> agreement. License agreements (in general) exist to restrict your rights
> beyond what copyright law alrady allows. There should be nothing on the
> CD that does that.

This isn't really correct.  Most of the software in Ubuntu is covered
under the GNU General Public License.  This *is* a license agreement.
Unlike most license agreements, however, it does not restrict your
usage of the software, but it does restrict the terms under which you
can re-distribute it.

Likewise, while most of the software is covered by the GPL, *all* the
software on the system is covered by some kind of license agreement be
it MIT, X, Artistic, Apache, BSD, GPL, LGPL, etc, etc.

You will find the license agreements for the various pieces of
software installed on your system in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

-- 
Chris

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