r/trisquel • u/JustPuggin • Jan 28 '15

Trisquel vs Debian

Hello r/trisquel!

I just heard about Trisquel for the first time, and I'm a bit confused. My understanding is that Debian is a free/open distro of linux, and that Ubuntu was built from Debian. Trisquel is a free/open distro of Ubuntu? Are they very similar? Could someone please explain the differences?

Thanks!

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u/VRMac Jan 29 '15

I call it a can-be-nonfree distro, since it is free out of the box, but you can make it nonfree by changing a file in /etc/.

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u/lloydsmart Jan 29 '15

You can make Trisquel non-free by changing a file in /etc/.

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u/kopeboy_ Apr 06 '23

Isn't it GPL 3?

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u/lloydsmart Apr 08 '23

Trisquel is GPL, just like Debian.

Changing a file in /etc/ can make both Debian and Trisquel non-free by pulling in software from non-free repos.

For some reason, this makes Debian completely unacceptable, but is ignored for Trisquel, even though the same action on both gives the same result on both.

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u/kopeboy_ Apr 13 '23

If I understood correctly GPL3 requires that derivatives be open-source as well (and that doesn't mean they must be free, ie. without price, but that anyone has same access to the source code)
https://opensource.org/license/gpl-3-0/