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Matthew Seaman m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk
Thu Sep 4 06:18:11 PDT 2003


On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 12:00:14PM +0200, roro wrote:
> Hi and concratulations
> Just one question: am I or not able to copy freeBSD and ad it as a present to , lets say ,a magazin? I found the section with the ports a bit confusing so I?d like to make sure, not to violate any copyright.

FreeBSD itself -- no problem.  Go right ahead.

The ports tree is considered an optional part of the main system.
That's the stuff that lives under /usr/ports: Makefiles, pkg-plists
etc.  So you can include that.

Most of the distfiles -- the source code that gets downloaded and
compiled via the ports system is freely available and can be included
in a disk as you suggest.  As generally can the packages that are the
result of compiling each port.  Not all ports of packages are so
freely available though. Where there are limitations on distributing
the port/package, the port Makefile will lines marked:

RESTRICTED=   "Some reason why this port is restricted"

or 

NO_CDROM=     "Some reason why this port shouldn't be included on the FreeBSD CDs"

NO_PACKAGE=   "Some reason why pre-compiled packages shouldn't be distributed"

See for instance: java/jdk14, mail/qmail

However, if you want to include many of the available ports/packages,
you're going to be giving away more disks than you bargained for with
each magazine.

Generally, if a port/package is freely available the package file will
appear on ftp.freebsd.org and it will probably be included on the 3rd
or 4th disks in a standard FreeBSD distribution set.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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