Free software analysis

Fedora Free Software Analysis

Fedora has a defined set of licensing policies, which can be found at Licensing. The summary version is that all software and fonts in Fedora must be under a Free license, with the notable exception of firmware.

Because we include firmware, Fedora does not meet the FSF's guidelines to be a "Free GNU Linux distribution".

Fedora is constantly auditing packages for compliance with these policies, and makes every possible effort to be compliant, however, due to the size of the distribution, we make no guarantees. If you spot something in Fedora which is not under an acceptable license, please let us know at legal@fedoraproject.org.

References

• http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/03/01/1646249 - Linux.com article on this.
• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing
• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LicenseAuditRecords
• http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CdrecordAlternatives
• Blaming Fedora - http://lwn.net/Articles/230042/
• Resisting the binary blob - http://lwn.net/Articles/209175/
• The Fedora Extras license audit - http://lwn.net/Articles/218037/