Legal

Finnix, the LiveCD for system administrators

Finnix is Free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The Distribution Itself

What does it mean for Finnix itself to be released under the GPL? While Finnix is comprised of Free software (some GPL, some with other Free licenses), all of the "glue" that makes Finnix what it is is released under the GPL. The scripts, initrd, kernel configs, directory structure, etc, etc. The following pieces of software are included with Finnix, and were designed with Finnix in mind. They include, but are not limited to:

• The initrd (/isolinux/minirt on the CD), which is responsible for probing hardware, finding the CD, optionally copying it to RAM or testing it for errors, setting up unionfs layers, etc.
• The finnix-scripts package, which includes:
  • finnix-autoconfig, which boots the second stage of Finnix, searches for hardware, scans disks and sets up partitions, etc.
  • finnix-halt, which handles halting and rebooting the CD.
  • bashlogin, a root-level replacement for getty/login.
  • finnix, a curses-based general purpose utility.
  • finnix-hwsubmit, a utility for submitting hardware information about the current running system.
• The finnix-uml package, which lets you set up and manage multiple concurrent Finnix instances on one machine, using User Mode Linux.
• The finnix-thumbdrive package, which lets you easily make a USB thumb drive into a Finnix bootable device.

Debian

Finnix is based on Debian Linux. All packages included from Debian are Free according to the terms of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, with the following exception(s):

• The dvdrtools package is taken from the non-free section of Debian, because while it allows unrestricted distribution, restrictions are made on modifications of the software. Oddly enough, cdrecord, which dvdrtools is based on, appears to have the same restrictions, but Debian considers cdrecord Free, but not dvdrtools.

GPL Source Distribution Compliance

Finnix

The source to all Finnix packages are available at http://packages.finnix.org/.

Debian

All Debian packages' sources are available via the Debian mirrors. To easily download the source to a particular package, go to http://packages.debian.org/package, where package is the name of the package you wish to download.

If a specific version to a package no longer appears on the Debian mirrors, then it has been moved to http://snapshot.debian.net/.

Other

Currently, all packages within Finnix are either from Debian, or included in the Finnix packages archive. If this ever changes in the future, this area will be updated with where to download the appropriate source. If you have a question regarding where to find the source of a particular piece of software included with Finnix, please ask in the forums.

Section 3(b) Compliance

It is prohibitive for the Finnix project to host local copies of sources to packages that are easily available elsewhere. Moreover, we believe we are already compliant under section 3(c) of the GPL, which (paraphrased) states that non-commercial organizations may send end-users upstream to retrieve sources. As explained above, it is rather easy to download the source to unmodified Debian packages.

However, in the spirit of choice, we are also choosing to comply with section 3(b) (the offer clause). The Finnix project hereby offers, upon request, to provide sources to any program used in Finnix. Sources will be provided on CDR via postal mail, at a nominal charge.

Trademark

While the Finnix software itself is governed by copyright and released under the GPL, the Finnix name and mark itself is a registered trademark of Ryan Finnie. You may use the Finnix logo to discuss/promote Finnix, as long as you comply with the Logo Display Guidelines.