Is ubuntu a free License software?

**mtservice2010** · December 8th, 2010

I just want to confirm if ubuntu is a free license Operating system, and it doesn't violated the anti piracy law. thanks.

**QLee** · December 8th, 2010

Originally Posted by mtservice2010

I just want to confirm if ubuntu is a free license Operating system, and it doesn't violated the anti piracy law. thanks.

What anti piracy law, what country are you asking about, not everyone here is in the same country. It's mostly GPL. You might want to look at this:
http://www.ubuntu.com/legal

**Bitrate** · December 8th, 2010

More info here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

**bodhi.zazen** · December 8th, 2010

Depends on what you mean by "free" exactly.

See the licensing links as well as any licensing in any particular package =)

Some people consider GNU to be less free then BSD, and not every package has the same licensing.

For example, see Mono:

http://www.mono-project.com/Licensing

That linky will give you some idea of what you are asking about =)

**directhex** · December 8th, 2010

Ubuntu is a distribution of thousands of pieces of Free Software. Each of those individual pieces of software has authors who may have picked one license or another. The most common licenses in use are the LGPL (versions 2, 2.1 and 3), GPL (2 and 3), MIT/X11, MPL and Artistic. I suggest you read those software licenses to determine whether you are happy with the licensing terms of Ubuntu as a whole. To check the license for a specific piece of software, look in /usr/share/doc/PACKAGENAME/copyright, or use a web browser to visit http://packages.ubuntu.com/PACKAGENAME, click the package name/version which match the OS version you care about, then click "Copyright File" in the top right.

Software entering Ubuntu needs to meet rigorous standards for copyright and licensing status, and is audited by the Ubuntu Archive Managers (or the Debian FTP Masters for software coming from Debian, which is the majority). You might also want to read the Debian Free Software Guidelines to see what criteria a license is required to meet for an app to be considered suitable for inclusion in the distribution.