Is Alpine non-free software?

By the way, Trisquel repository have Alpine.

Jxself is on this forum too, he should be able clarify the issue. Maybe he actually looked at the sourcecode and found some pieces of binary hidden in there?

I can find the offending file here http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel/pool/main/a/alpine/alpine_2.02.orig.tar.gz

in pico/msmem.c

So I filed https://trisquel.info/en/issues/8707

(As stated in the Debian bug it's in the source code for windoze only however, so the binary is clean FWIW.)

Thanks lembas. This is precisely why you can't rely on just looking at a software license alone to know if something is free software, but also need to go spelunking through everything and looking to see what's there.

As an example: If you look *only* at software licenses and nothing else you might conclude that the kernel called Linux is free software because you don't go looking through the source code and don't find all of those problematic parts that Linux-libre rips out.

I do it to help GNU/Linux distros be committed to freedom, which is one of the FSF's high priority projects:

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/priority-projects/highpriorityprojects#freedom

Anyone should feel free to join in if they're interested.

Another reason not to rely on just the high-level copyright and license info is that it may not be accurate:

roboq6, for example, points to "Copyright © 2006 University of Washington" and "Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0" but I can point to two things that show this information doesn't provide an accurate picture of the copyright holder and the license:

1. alpine-2.00/pico/msmem.c says it's copyrighted by Stephen Chung, *not* the University of Washington.

2. It uses a different license (not the Apache license) that says:

"Theoretically, you are required to obtain special approval from me (because I copyrighted these routines) if you want to use them in your programs. However, I usually don't really care if you are not using these routines in a commercial, shareware etc. product."

So, seeing that copyright statement & license notice that roboq6 quoted doesn't give you the complete picture of all of the copyright holders and licenses in effect for the program. You need to review everything to get a complete picture. There are programs to help with this kind of analysis.

So, in the end, it wasn't a binary blob as Cyberhawk thought but source code with a different license.

What Stephen Chung said is problematic because:
1. He indicated permission wasn't needed was long as it wasn't used commercially. According to the FSF's free software definition, "a free program must be available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial distribution."

2. He refers to obtaining special approval to do that. In the FSF's free software definition, "being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so."

1. jxself, are you trying to contact with Stephen Chung?
Maybe we can convince him to change the license

2."As stated in the Debian bug it's in the source code for windoze only however, so the binary is clean "
Is that true? If yes, we are can simply get rid of msmem.c