GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is the most widely used free software license, which guarantees end users (individuals, organizations, companies) the freedoms to run, study, share (copy), and modify the software.
- Software that allows these rights is called free software
- If the software is copylefted, the license requires that those rights to be retained.
The GPL demands both.
The license was originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project.
In other words, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved whenever the work is distributed, even when the work is changed or added to.
The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derived works can only be distributed under the same license terms.
This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are the standard examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use.
See also
- BSD licenses
- Free Software Foundation
- Free software license
- MIT License
- Permissive free software licenses
- Richard Stallman
