Copyleft's Guarantee

The Mandriva, Slackware and Fedora discs are "copyleft".
See the documentation on the discs of the other distributions.

Some examples of "copyleft" form of copyright.
Artistic Licence
General Public Licence (GPL)
The BSD Licence (University)
Another example

Debian

The software in the "main" and "contrib" filesystems are "copyleft".

The copyright of "non-free" and the additional software varies widely and people are expected to make themselves familiar with the copyright conditions of each package.

The copyright of the Official Debian CDs is held by Software in the Public Interest so copies can be burnt as of right.

Copyleft Custom Discs.

The following is necessary to protect the FSF (Debian) and to avoid confusion.

I formally claim copyright over the Copyleft Standard and any other Copyleft custom discs. However, this does not affect your freedom to copy the free software files from these discs.

Having asserted my copyright, I now give permission to burn copies of the Copyleft custom discs under the following conditions.

1. That each disc is labelled "Copyleft Standard (or whatever) CD" with the Debian release, disc letter and architecture copied from the original, e.g. "Copyleft Standard CD, Debian 4.0r0, i386, Disc A."
(Ensuring that the people receiving discs know that they are not receiving Official CDs.)

2. That people receiving disc(s) are told where to get source code.
(A FSF requirement)

It would be nice if people did the following.

1. That the people receiving the discs are informed of the location of my home page, and my addresses.

2. That the person burning the discs email me with their intentions.

Having done that legal stuff:-
I expect and encourage people to make copies of Copyleft discs.

Other Copyrights
"Linux" is the trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
The various distribution logos are the property of the owners of the distribution to which they refer.
I have been unable to trace the owner of the "Hurd Ahead" logo".
All other logos are "Free".
Unless otherwise stated, the text content of this site is the copyright of myself, Philip Charles. But ask and you will receive.

Guarantee

Index

If you have looked at the GPL and the two examples of the university copyright you will see that it is impossible for me or any other distributor to guarantee the software. If any of the software breaks, you are allowed to keep the bits.

But I do guarantee that the software you receive on the Debian discs is an accurate copy of what is available at ftp.debian.org, that the discs of the other distributions are as functional as the originals, and that there are no defects in the media.

Defective discs are replaced. If you have problems, email me. This is important, as what seems to be a problem with the disc is usually a problem with the installation, and replacing the CD will not be of any help. The Copyleft disc failure rate is well under 1%.