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56.

Any help, suggestions, and especially, patches, are greatly appreciated. Working versions of this document can be found at <ulink url="&url-d-i-alioth-manual;"></ulink>. There you will find a list of all the different architectures and languages for which this document is available.

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Source is also available publicly; look in <xref linkend="administrivia"/> for more information concerning how to contribute. We welcome suggestions, comments, patches, and bug reports (use the package <classname>installation-guide</classname> for bugs, but check first to see if the problem is already reported).

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About Copyrights and Software Licenses

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We're sure that you've read some of the licenses that come with most commercial software &mdash; they usually say that you can only use one copy of the software on a single computer. This system's license isn't like that at all. We encourage you to put a copy of &debian; on every computer in your school or place of business. Lend your installation media to your friends and help them install it on their computers! You can even make thousands of copies and <emphasis>sell</emphasis> them &mdash; albeit with a few restrictions. Your freedom to install and use the system comes directly from Debian being based on <emphasis>free software</emphasis>.

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Calling software <emphasis>free</emphasis> doesn't mean that the software isn't copyrighted, and it doesn't mean that CDs containing that software must be distributed at no charge. Free software, in part, means that the licenses of individual programs do not require you to pay for the privilege of distributing or using those programs. Free software also means that not only may anyone extend, adapt, and modify the software, but that they may distribute the results of their work as well.

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The Debian project, as a pragmatic concession to its users, does make some packages available that do not meet our criteria for being free. These packages are not part of the official distribution, however, and are only available from the <userinput>contrib</userinput> or <userinput>non-free</userinput> areas of Debian mirrors or on third-party CD-ROMs; see the <ulink url="&url-debian-faq;">Debian FAQ</ulink>, under <quote>The Debian FTP archives</quote>, for more information about the layout and contents of the archives.

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Many of the programs in the system are licensed under the <emphasis>GNU</emphasis> <emphasis>General Public License</emphasis>, often simply referred to as <quote>the GPL</quote>. The GPL requires you to make the <emphasis>source code</emphasis> of the programs available whenever you distribute a binary copy of the program; that provision of the license ensures that any user will be able to modify the software. Because of this provision, the source code<footnote> <para> For information on how to locate, unpack, and build binaries from Debian source packages, see the <ulink url="&url-debian-faq;">Debian FAQ</ulink>, under <quote>Basics of the Debian Package Management System</quote>. </para> </footnote> for all such programs is available in the Debian system.

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There are several other forms of copyright statements and software licenses used on the programs in Debian. You can find the copyrights and licenses for every package installed on your system by looking in the file <filename>/usr/share/doc/<replaceable>package-name</replaceable>/copyright </filename> once you've installed a package on your system.

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For more information about licenses and how Debian determines whether software is free enough to be included in the main distribution, see the <ulink url="&url-dfsg;">Debian Free Software Guidelines</ulink>.

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The most important legal notice is that this software comes with <emphasis>no warranties</emphasis>. The programmers who have created this software have done so for the benefit of the community. No guarantee is made as to the suitability of the software for any given purpose. However, since the software is free, you are empowered to modify that software to suit your needs &mdash; and to enjoy the benefits of the changes made by others who have extended the software in this way.