About the GNU project

People often confuse Free Software with public domain software or have other wrong information about the GNU project. If you want to know it definitely, please read the GNU General Public License (English original or - inofficial - translations).

For even more information, please consult the official GNU home page from the Free Software Foundation (FSF),

http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/ (USA),
http://home.pages.de/~GNU/ (mirror in Germany)
[more mirror sites].

Some small notes about common misunderstandings follow.

• These notes are not authorized by the FSF. For official statements, please consult the GNU home page (see above).

• It is legal to compile commercial programs written in Pascal with GNU Pascal. They do not automatically become Free Software themselves.

• When you modify a free program, e.g. the GNU Pascal compiler itself, your modified work will be Free Software, too.

• When using libraries for writing commercial programs, check the libraries' licenses carefully. The GNU Library General Public License allows linking a library to non-free software under certain conditions, the ordinary GNU General Public License does not.

• It is legal to charge a fee for distributing Free Software. If somebody sold you a copy of GNU Pascal you could have got without paying for it as well, that's in agreement with the GNU General Public License.

• However if somebody wants you to sign an agreement that you won't re-distribute the Free Software you have got, it would be illegal. That person would lose the right to use and distribute Free Software.

• The preferred form to distribute Free Software is in source code. This ensures that everybody has the freedom to customize the software or to fix bugs by himself. When we distribute GNU Pascal binaries we do it only to simplify installation and to encourage its use.

Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.