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Talaat Etman
Asked: 2024-07-30 04:33:36 +0800 CST

Is it legal to improve or change one of Ubuntu .deb packages for personal use on my devices?

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The situation:

I enhanced the firmware-b43-installer package to include b43-fwcutter, my wifi driver, the wireless network name, and password. After installing this improved package, whether in a new installation or live session, I can directly access the Internet.

Befor this modification, the firmware-b43-installer package requires an Internet connection to download the b43 wifi diver file in a compressed form from its source. It also requires a package to unzip this compressed file and b43-fwcutter package to install the driver.

The question:

Is it legal to improve or change one of Ubuntu .deb packages related to an driver installation for personal use on my devices?

networking

2 Answers

  1. If you are doing this on your home computer, for your personal use, really nobody would care if this is legal or not. Nobody is going to enter your home and search your computer to check if you modified that package, or going to sue you for this.

    If you plan to use this computer for business purposes, within a company, ask your lawyer. Check the license of that particular package; the license may explicitly allow modifications. Even if it doesn't, your country's copyright law may allow it. For example, in my country copyright law explicitly allows modifying any program that you have a legal right to use, if this is "necessary for using the program according to its purpose", which also explicitly includes fixing bugs. Of course your case may be different.

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  2. Best Answer

    As far as the firmware-b43-installer package itself is concerned, it's easy to find the answer out to this. Download the source package with apt source firmware-b43-installer, change to the source package directory that this command produces (at the time of this writing this is b43-fwcutter-019 with the Ubuntu 24.04 repos), then cat debian/copyright to look at the copyright and licensing info of the package. All official Debian and Ubuntu packages are required to list their copyright and licensing info in this file, and thus you can use it to quickly look up info about these kinds of things. At least with the copy of firmware-b43-installer I downloaded, the entire package is listed as being under the BSD-2-Clause license (with the exception of some md5-related files which are listed as being public domain). The full text of this license is as follows:

    Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

    1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

    2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

    THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

    At least with my non-lawyer interpretation of the license, modifying the package itself is probably just fine.

    Where things get stickier is the license for your WiFi driver. Depending on the terms of the driver itself, this may be perfectly fine, or it could be a license violation. You will have to read the license agreement for that driver to find out whether or not integrating it into a package in this way for personal use is allowable or not.

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