Another result of Debian's licensing policies is the existence of three distinct software repositories:
- main: These are packages whose license conforms to the DFSG
- contrib: These packages have licenses that also conform to the DFSG, but that depend on other packages or libraries that do not
- non-free: These are packages whose license does not conform to the DFSG but that are allowed to be distributed with Debian
Users are free to choose whether to allow software from the contrib and non-free classes to be installed. If it is installed, the users are responsible for knowing and following the appropriate licenses.
Other, non-official repositories also exist, which host software that, for one reason or another, isn't included in any of the official Debian repositories.
