This is the Debian GNU/Linux prepackaged version of GNU tar. GNU tar, heavily based on John Gilmore's public domain version of tar, was originally written by Graham Todd. It is now maintained by Paul Eggert . This package is maintained for Debian by Bdale Garbee , and was built from the sources found at: ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/tar/ GNU tar is Copyright 1994, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2 dated June, 1991. The Debian packaging is (C) 2006, Bdale Garbee and is also licensed under the GPL. On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in the `/usr/share/common-licenses' directory.