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The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project (a project to create a complete free software operating system). It has since become the most popular license for free software (or "open source software"). The latest version of the license, version 2, was released in 1991. The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a modified version of the GPL intended for some software libraries. Download high resolution version (720x720, 40 KB) File links The following pages link to this file: GNU GNU General Public License Image:Auschwitz I Entrance. ...
Download high resolution version (720x720, 40 KB) File links The following pages link to this file: GNU GNU General Public License Image:Auschwitz I Entrance. ...
GPL is a TLA: GNU General Public License (See Template:GPL) Glider pilot license This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
Generally speaking, free software license is a phrase used by the free software movement to mean any software license that meets the free software definition of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). ...
Richard Matthew Stallman, a. ...
The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa GNU is a recursive acronym for GNUs Not Unix. The GNU project was launched in 1983 by Richard Stallman with the goal of creating a complete operating system -- called the GNU system or simply GNU -- that is free software, meaning that users...
Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), is software which is free as in freedom, not as in beer (also referred to as libre or freedom software). ...
In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ...
Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is an FSF approved Free Software license designed as a compromise between the GNU General Public License and simple permissive licenses such as the BSD license and the MIT License. ...
In computer science, a library is a collection of subprograms used to develop software. ...
The GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the following rights, or "freedoms":
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- The freedom to study how the program works, and modify it. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this)
- The freedom to redistribute copies.
- The freedom to improve the program, and release the improvements to the public. (Access to the source code is a precondition for this)
In contrast, the end-user licenses that come with proprietary software rarely grant the end-user any rights (other than the right to use the software, although it is debatable whether one requires a license for use per se), and may even attempt to restrict activities normally permitted by law, such as reverse engineering. A software license is a type of proprietary or gratiuitious license as well as a memorandum of contract between a producer and a user of computer software — sometimes called an End User License Agreement (EULA) — that specifies the perimeters of the permission granted by the owner to the user. ...
Proprietary software is a term used to describe software in which the user does not control what it does or cannot study or edit the code, in contrast to free software. ...
Economics and commerce define an end-user as the person who uses a product. ...
Reverse engineering (RE) is the process of taking something (a device, an electrical component, a software program, etc. ...
The primary difference between the GPL and more "permissive" free software licenses such as the BSD License is that the GPL seeks to ensure that the above freedoms are preserved in copies and in derivative works. It does this using a legal mechanism known as copyleft, invented by Stallman, which requires derivative works of GPL-licensed programs to also be licensed under the GPL. In contrast, BSD-style licenses allow for derivative works to be redistributed as proprietary software. The BSD license is the license agreement that the BSD software (largely, a version of UNIX) is distributed under. ...
In copyright law, a derivative work is an artistic creation that includes aspects of work previously created and protected. ...
The reversed c is the copyleft symbol. ...
By some measures, the GPL is the single most popular license for free and Open Source software. As of April 2004, the GPL accounted for nearly 75% of the 23,479 free-software projects listed on Freshmeat, and about 68% of the projects listed on SourceForge. (It should be noted that these two sites are owned by OSTG, a company that advocates Linux and the GPL.) Similarly, a 2001 survey of Red Hat Linux 7.1 found that 50% of the source code was licensed under the GPL, and 1997 survey of Metalab, then the largest free-software archive, showed that the GPL accounted for about half of the licenses used. Prominent free software programs licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and Perl (see List of programs released under the GPL). Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), is software which is free as in freedom, not as in beer (also referred to as libre or freedom software). ...
Open source refers to projects that are open to the public and which draw on other projects that are freely available to the general public. ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Freshmeat (www. ...
SourceForge is a collaborative software development management system. ...
Tux, a penguin, is the official Linux mascot. ...
2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Red Hat Linux is a Linux distribution, which was one of the most popular. ...
The Linux mascot Tux created by Larry Ewing In computing, the Linux kernel is a free Unix-like operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and subsequently improved with the assistance of developers around the world. ...
The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ...
Programming Republic of Perl logo Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below), is an interpreted procedural programming language designed by Larry Wall. ...
Since the GPL was written, a great number of programs have been released under it. ...
History
The GPL was written by Richard Stallman for use with programs released as part of the GNU project. It was based on a unification of similar licenses used for early versions of GNU Emacs, the GNU Debugger and the GNU Compiler Collection. These licenses contained similar provisions to the modern GPL, but were specific to each program. Stallman's goal was to produce one license that could be used for any project, thus making it possible for many projects to share code. This became the GPL version 1, released in January 1989. Richard Matthew Stallman, a. ...
The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa GNU is a recursive acronym for GNUs Not Unix. The GNU project was launched in 1983 by Richard Stallman with the goal of creating a complete operating system -- called the GNU system or simply GNU -- that is free software, meaning that users...
The GNU Emacs interface, running in a graphical environment. ...
The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. ...
The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ...
1989 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
By 1990, it was becoming apparent that a less restrictive license would be strategically useful for some software libraries; this led to the Library General Public License (LGPL) version 2, released in June 1991. The Library GPL was renamed to the Lesser General Public License in 1999. Although it was named version 2, it was actually the first version, but was so named to match the simultaneously released GPL version 2, which was intended to clarify the terms of the GPL. 1990 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
In computer science, a library is a collection of subprograms used to develop software. ...
1991 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is an FSF approved Free Software license designed as a compromise between the GNU General Public License and simple permissive licenses such as the BSD license and the MIT License. ...
1999 is a common year starting on Friday of the Common Era, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...
As of 2005, version 3 of the GPL is being written by Eben Moglen and Richard Stallman. In the post-talk questions and answers session of Stallman's April 7th 2005 talk in Philidelphia, Stallman said the following when asked about what changes were being considered for the GPLv3: [1] (http://www.wplug.org/files/rms/20050407_RMS.ogg) 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and is the current year. ...
Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. ...
Richard Matthew Stallman, a. ...
- Overall it's going to be the same, but there's just various areas where we're looking at changes in details. And, one of them is that we might put in some kind of patent retaliation clause, but it's hard to see what's a good one to do. We'll put in something to deal with this case of public use on a server the public connects to. We may put in something designed to prohibit putting the software into something that wont let the user, that refuses to run a modified version if the user installs one.
- We might put in something refusing to allow DRM modifications. Maybe, maybe not. We're putting in things — this part is pretty much designed already — that will allow a wider range of simple permissive licenses to be compatible with the GPL.
- We have reworked the system library extension, [clarifies] eh exception.
- So I hope this shows you that it's all a matter of details here or there. It would be completely wrong to change the major outline of the GPL. And we're not going to.
In May of 2005, Daniel Wallace filed suit against the Free Software Foundation in the Southern District of Indiana. The suit contends that the GPL is an attempt to fix prices at zero. Daniel Wallace is an American professor and physicist (according to his lawsuit document, he has a BS in physics). ...
Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ...
License terms The following is a colloquial summary of the terms of the GPL. The only legally precise description, however, is that of the actual text of the GPL, which is available through an external link at the end of this article.
Granting of rights The terms and conditions of the GPL are available to anybody receiving a copy of the GPLed work ("the licensee"). Any licensee accepting the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the work or any derivative version. The licensee is allowed to charge a fee for this service, or do this free of charge. This latter point distinguishes the GPL from software licenses that prohibit commercial redistribution. Stallman has argued that free software should not place restrictions on commercial use, and the GPL explicitly states that GPLed works may be (re)sold.
The GPL additionally states that a distributor may not impose "further restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL". This forbids e.g. the distribution of the software under a non-disclosure agreement or contract. Distributors under the GPL also grant a license for any of their patents practiced by the software, to practice those patents in GPL software.
The copyleft The GPL does not give the licensee unlimited redistribution rights. The right to redistribute is granted only if the licensee includes the source code (or a legally-binding offer to provide the source code), including any modifications made. Furthermore, the distributed copies, including the modifications, must also be licensed under the terms of the GPL. Source code (commonly just source or code) is any series of statements written in some human-readable computer programming language. ...
This requirement is known as copyleft, and it gets its legal teeth from the fact that the program is copyrighted. Because it is copyrighted, a licensee has no right to modify or redistribute it (barring fair use), except under the terms of the copyleft. One is only required to accept the terms of the GPL if one wishes to exercise rights normally restricted by copyright law, such as redistribution. Conversely, if one distributes copies of the work without abiding by the terms of the GPL (for instance, by keeping the source code secret), they can be sued by the original author under copyright law. The reversed c is the copyleft symbol. ...
For copyright issues in relation to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:copyrights. ...
Although company logos such as these are often copyrighted and trademarked, the fair use doctrine permits their use in certain contexts without prior permission. ...
A lawsuit is a civil action brought before a court in which the party commencing the action, the plaintiff, seeks a legal remedy. ...
The copyleft thus uses copyright law to accomplish the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of imposing restrictions, it grants rights to other people, in a way that ensures the rights cannot subsequently be taken away. This is the reason the GPL has been described as a "copyright hack". It also ensures that unlimited redistribution rights are not granted, should any legal flaw (or "bug") be found in the copyleft statement. A hack in progress in Lobby 7 at MIT. Hack is a term in the slang of the technology culture which has come into existence over the past few decades. ...
A computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working correctly or produces an incorrect result. ...
Many distributors of GPL'ed programs bundle the source code with the executables. An alternative method of satisfying the copyleft is to provide a written offer to provide the source code on a physical medium (such as a CD) upon request. In practice, many GPL'ed programs are distributed over the Internet, and the source code is made available over FTP. For Internet distribution, this complies with the license. This page is about the File Transfer Protocol, a computer protocol. ...
The copyleft only applies when a person seeks to redistribute the program. One is allowed to make private modified versions, without any obligation to divulge the modifications as long as the modified software is not distributed to anyone else. Note that the copyleft only applies to the software and not to its output (unless that output is itself a derivative work of the program); for example, a web portal running a modified GPL content management system is not required to distribute its changes to the underlying software. (It has been suggested that this be changed for version 3 of the GPL.) A content management system (often shortened to CMS) is a system used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. ...
The GPL is a license The GPL was designed as a license, rather than a contract. The legal distinction between a license and a contract is an important one: contracts are enforceable by contract law, whereas the GPL, as a license, is enforced under the terms of copyright law. Confusion often arises when people think that the GPL is solely enforceable as a contract, which leads to the misconception that "the GPL is unenforceable because the person never agreed to it." A license or licence is a document or agreement giving permission to do something. ...
A contract is any legally-enforceable promise or set of promises made by one party to another and, as such, reflects the policies represented by freedom of contract. ...
The way the GPL license works is simple, if you do not agree to and abide by the GPL's terms you do not have permission, under copyright law, to copy or distribute GPL licensed software or derivative works. It does not mean that the rules of the GPL do not apply to you and that you may use the software however you like. The default is the restrictions of copyright law, not the anarchy of the public domain.
Opponents of free software often describe the GPL as being viral. This is an attempt to reinforce the mistaken belief, for the purpose of discouraging GPL acceptance, that if GPL licensed code is combined with a company's proprietary code, then that company could be forced to release their software under the GPL, which is false and impossible. The GPL simply requires that all copies and derivative works of GPL licensed software also be licensed under the GPL. If an entity distributes copies or derivative works of GPL licensed software without following the terms of the GPL, that may constitute copyright infringement, and the copyright holders of the GPL licensed software may be entitled to monetary damages, and can get a court to issue an injunction to stop further distribution of the software. The GPL can not force other copyright owners to do anything with code they own. If someone releases code or a binary program that is a copy or a derivative work of GPL licensed software without licensing it under the GPL they could be sued for copyright infringement. Which is exactly the same as copyright infringement over proprietary software as the GPL is a copyright license written under ordinary copyright law. Others use the term "viral" in a different sense, they note that code often spreads quickly after the author or copyright owner licenses it under the GPL, as in replicating like a virus i.e. an exponential growth of popularity, usage and acceptance. The GPL cannot affect third party software without the permission of the code's copyright holders. Many in the Free Software movement prefer the term "hereditary" to describe the GPL's copyleft effect, because it has less negative connotations and because it is a more accurate metaphor. Viral phenomena are objects or phenomena able to reproduce themselves or convert other objects into copies of themself when other objects are exposed to it. ...
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owners exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works that build upon it. ...
The term Damages may refer either to the sum paid or the harm inflicted whereas monetary damages is a more specific phrase refering only to the first definition. ...
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that either prohibits or compels (enjoins or restrains) a party from continuing a particular activity. ...
Copyright holders The text of the GPL is itself copyrighted, and the copyright is held by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). However, the FSF does not hold the copyright for a work released under the GPL, unless an author explicitly assigns copyrights to the FSF (which seldom happens except for programs that are part of the GNU project.) Only the individual copyright holders have the authority to sue when a license violation takes place. Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ...
The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa GNU is a recursive acronym for GNUs Not Unix. The GNU project was launched in 1983 by Richard Stallman with the goal of creating a complete operating system -- called the GNU system or simply GNU -- that is free software, meaning that users...
Unlike the works released under the GPL, the GPL itself is not freely modifiable: copying and distribution is allowed, but changing the text of the GPL itself is generally forbidden. The FSF does permit people to create new licenses based on the GPL, as long as the derived licenses do not use the GPL preamble without permission. This is discouraged, however, since such a license is generally incompatible with the GPL. (See the GPL FAQ (http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html) for more information.)
Other licenses created by the GNU project include the GNU Lesser General Public License and the GNU Free Documentation License. GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is an FSF approved Free Software license designed as a compromise between the GNU General Public License and simple permissive licenses such as the BSD license and the MIT License. ...
GNU logo The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. ...
GPL-related disputes One of the key disputes related to the GPL is whether or not non-GPL software can dynamically link to GPL libraries. The GPL is clear in requiring that all derivative works of GPL'ed code must themselves be GPL'ed. However, it is not clear whether an executable that dynamically links to a GPL library should be considered a derivative work. The free/open-source software community is split on this issue, with the FSF asserting that such an executable is indeed a derivative work, and other experts disagreeing. This is ultimately a question not of the GPL per se, but of how copyright law defines derivative works. In Galoob v. Nintendo the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals defined a derivative work as having "'form' or permanence" and noted that "the infringing work must incorporate a portion of the copyrighted work in some form," but there have been no clear court decisions to resolve this particular conflict. In computer science, a library is a collection of subprograms used to develop software. ...
In copyright law, a derivative work is an artistic creation that includes aspects of work previously created and protected. ...
Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. ...
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the following United States district courts: District of Alaska District of Arizona Central, Eastern, Northern, and Southern Districts of California District of Guam District of Hawaii District of Idaho District of Montana...
A number of businesses are based on distributing a GPL'ed library and selling a separate license to companies wishing to link the library with proprietary code, whether dynamically or not. Examples of such companies include MySQL AB and Trolltech (Qt). Also, ReiserFS (Namesys) and Cygwin (Red Hat) are GPL'ed programs for which other licenses are offered. As there is no record of anyone circumventing the GPL by dynamic linking without backing down when threatened with lawsuits by the FSF or the respective copyright holder, the restriction is apparently de facto enforceable even if not currently de jure. MySQL logo MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user, SQL (Structured Query Language) relational database server (RDBMS). ...
Trolltech (formerly known as Quasar Technologies) is a computer software company from Oslo, Norway. ...
In computer programming, the Qt toolkit is a cross-platform graphical widget toolkit for the development of GUI programs. ...
The ReiserFS is a general-purpose computer file system designed and implemented by a team at Namesys led by Hans Reiser, who is referred to as the projects Benevolent Dictator for Life. ...
Namesys is the company based in the United States and Russia owned and run by Hans Reiser. ...
Cygwin is a collection of free software tools originally developed by Cygnus Solutions to allow various versions of Microsoft Windows to act somewhat like a UNIX system. ...
Alternate meanings: See Red hat Red Hat, Inc. ...
In 2002, MySQL AB sued Progress NuSphere for copyright and trademark infringement in United States district court. NuSphere had allegedly violated MySQL's copyright by linking code for the Gemini table type into the MySQL server. After a preliminary hearing before Judge Patti Saris on February 27, 2002, the parties entered settlement talks and eventually settled. At the hearing, Judge Saris "saw no reason" that the GPL would not be enforceable. 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts is the Federal district court whose jurisdiction is comprised of the state of Massachusetts. ...
February 27 is the 58th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
In August 2003, the SCO Group stated that they believed the GPL to have no legal validity, and that they intended to take up lawsuits over sections of code supposedly copied from SCO Unix into the Linux kernel. This was a problematic stand for them, as they had distributed Linux and other GPL'ed code in their "Caldera Linux" distribution, and there is little evidence that they had any legal right to do so except under the terms of the GPL. For more information, see SCO-Linux controversies. Note: as an adjective (stressed on the second syllable instead of the first), august means honorable. ...
2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The SCO Group, Inc. ...
The Linux mascot Tux created by Larry Ewing In computing, the Linux kernel is a free Unix-like operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and subsequently improved with the assistance of developers around the world. ...
The SCO Group (SCO) is involved in a dispute with various Linux vendors and users. ...
In April 2004 the Netfilter/iptables project was granted a preliminary injunction against Sitecom Germany by Munich District Court after Sitecom refused to desist from distributing Netfilter's GPL'ed software, allegedly in violation of the terms of the GPL. On July 2004, the German court confirmed this injunction as a final ruling against SiteCom. The court's justification for its decision exactly mirrored the predictions given earlier by the FSF's Eben Moglen: April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
In computer networking, netfilter, along with its companion iptables, are collectively a software extension to the Linux operating system that implements a stateful firewall framework. ...
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that either prohibits or compels (enjoins or restrains) a party from continuing a particular activity. ...
Munich: Frauenkirche and Town Hall steeple Munich (German: München (pronounced listen) is the state capital of the German Bundesland of Bavaria. ...
July is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. ...
- Defendant has infringed on the copyright of plaintiff by offering the software 'netfilter/iptables' for download and by advertising its distribution, without adhering to the license conditions of the GPL. Said actions would only be permissible if defendant had a license grant... This is independent of the questions whether the licensing conditions of the GPL have been effectively agreed upon between plaintiff and defendant or not. If the GPL were not agreed upon by the parties, defendant would notwithstanding lack the necessary rights to copy, distribute, and make the software 'netfilter/iptables' publicly available.
This ruling was important because it was the first time in the world that a court had confirmed that the GPL is a legally enforceable license.
GPL compatibility Many of the most common free software licenses, such as the original MIT/X license, the new BSD license, and the LGPL, are "GPL-compatible". That is, their code can be combined with a GPL'ed program without conflict (the new combination would have the GPL applied to the whole). However, some open source software licenses are not GPL-compatible. Many have strongly advocated that open source software developers use only GPL-compatible licenses, because doing otherwise makes it difficult to reuse software in larger wholes.
Links and references Wikisource has original text related to this article: GNU General Public License File links The following pages link to this file: Abraham Lincoln Aristotle Ayn Rand Adolf Hitler Al Gore A Modest Proposal Articles of Confederation Arthur Schopenhauer Albert Einstein Amhrán na bhFiann Arthur Conan Doyle Ada programming language Antarctic Treaty System Andrew Jackson Andrew Johnson Adam Smith Bill Clinton Bible...
Wikisource is a sister project to Wikipedia that aims to create a free wiki library of primary source texts, and translations of source texts in any language. ...
External links April 7 is the 97th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (98th in leap years). ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
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