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The GNU General Public License ( GNU GPL or simply GPL ) is a series of widely-used free software licenses that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software. The licenses were originally written by Richard Stallman, former head of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project, and grant the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. The GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. This is in distinction to permissive software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are widely used, less restrictive examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use. Historically, the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the free and open-source software domain. Prominent free software programs licensed under the GPL include the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collectio...

The GPL was written by Richard Stallman in 1989, for use with programs released as part of the GNU project. The original GPL was based on a unification of similar licenses used for early versions of GNU Emacs (1985), the GNU Debugger, and the GNU C Compiler. These licenses contained similar provisions to the modern GPL, but were specific to each program, rendering them incompatible, despite being the same license. 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. The second version of the license, version 2, was released in 1991. Over the following 15 years, members of the free software community became concerned over problems in the GPLv2 license that could let someone exploit GPL-licensed software in ways contrary to the license's intent. These problems included tivoization (the inclusion of GPL-licensed software in hardware that refuses to run modified versions of its software), compatibili...

The terms and conditions of the GPL must be made available to anybody receiving a copy of the work that has a GPL applied to it ("the licensee"). Any licensee who adheres to 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. The FSF argues that free software should not place restrictions on commercial use, and the GPL explicitly states that GPL works may be sold at any price. The GPL additionally states that a distributor may not impose "further restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL". This forbids activities such as distributing of the software under a non-disclosure agreement or contract. The fourth section for version 2 of the license and the seventh section of version 3 require that pr...

The text of the GPL is itself copyrighted, and the copyright is held by the Free Software Foundation. The FSF permits 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 might be incompatible with the GPL and causes a perceived license proliferation. Other licenses created by the GNU project include the GNU Lesser General Public License, GNU Free Documentation License, and Affero General Public License. The text of the GPL is not itself under the GPL. The license's copyright disallows modification of the license. Copying and distributing the license is allowed since the GPL requires recipients to get "a copy of this License along with the Program". According to the GPL FAQ, anyone can make a new license using a modified version of the GPL as long as they use a different name for the license, do not mention "GNU", and remove the preamble,...

Libraries edit According to the FSF, "The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without ever releasing them." However, if one releases a GPL-licensed entity to the public, there is an issue regarding linking: namely, whether a proprietary program that uses a GPL library is in violation of the GPL. This key dispute is whether non-GPL software can legally statically link or dynamically link to GPL libraries. Different opinions exist on this issue. The GPL is clear in requiring that all derivative works of code under the GPL must themselves be under the GPL. Ambiguity arises with regards to using GPL libraries, and bundling GPL software into a larger package (perhaps mixed into a binary via static linking). This is ultimately a question not of the GPL per se , but of how copyright law defines derivative works. The following points of view exist: Point of view: dynamic and static li...

The first known violation of the GPL was in 1989, when NeXT extended the GCC compiler to support Objective-C, but did not publicly release the changes. After an inquiry they created a public patch. There was no lawsuit filed for this violation. 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 MySQL's GPL'ed code with NuSphere Gemini table without being in compliance with the license. After a preliminary hearing before Judge Patti Saris on 27 February 2002, the parties entered settlement talks and eventually settled.f After the hearing, FSF commented that "Judge Saris made clear that she sees the GNU GPL to be an enforceable and binding license." In August 2003, the SCO Group stated that they believed the GPL to have no legal validity, and that they intended to pursue lawsuits over sections of code supposedly copied from SCO Unix into the L...

Code licensed under several other licenses can be combined with a program under the GPL without conflict, as long as the combination of restrictions on the work as a whole does not put any additional restrictions beyond what GPL allows. In addition to the regular terms of the GPL, there are additional restrictions and permissions one can apply: If a user wants to combine code licensed under different versions of GPL, then this is only allowed if the code with the earlier GPL version includes an "or any later version" statement. For instance, the GPLv3 licensed GNU LibreDWG library can't be used anymore by LibreCAD and FreeCAD who have GPLv2 only dependencies. Code licensed under LGPL is permitted to be linked with any other code no matter what license that code has, though the LGPL does add additional requirements for the combined work. LGPLv3 and GPLv2-only can thus commonly not be linked, as the combined Code work would add additional LGPLv3 requirements on top of the ...

It is possible to use the GPL for text documents instead of computer programs, or more generally for all kinds of media, if it is clear what constitutes the source code (defined as "the preferred form of the work for making changes in it"). For manuals and textbooks, though, the FSF recommends the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) instead, which it created for this purpose. Nevertheless, the Debian developers recommended (in a resolution adopted in 2006) to license documentation for their project under the GPL, because of the incompatibility of the GFDL with the GPL (text licensed under the GFDL cannot be incorporated into GPL software). Also, the FLOSS Manuals foundation, an organization devoted to creating manuals for free software, decided to eschew the GFDL in favor of the GPL for its texts in 2007. If the GPL is used for computer fonts, any documents or images made with such fonts might also have to be distributed under the terms of the GPL. This is not the case in c...

Historically, the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the FOSS domain. A 1997 survey of MetaLab, then the largest free software archive, showed that the GPL accounted for about half of the software licensed therein. Similarly, a 2000 survey of Red Hat Linux 7.1 found that 53% of the source code was licensed under the GPL. As of 2003update, about 68% of all projects and 82.1% of the open source industry certified licensed projects listed on SourceForge.net were from the GPL license family. As of August 2008update, the GPL family accounted for 70.9% of the 44,927 free software projects listed on Freecode. After the release of the GPLv3 in June 2007, adoption of this new GPL version was much discussed and some projects decided against upgrading. For instance the Linux kernel, MySQL, BusyBox, AdvFS, Blender, VLC media player, and MediaWiki decided against adopting GPLv3. On the other hand, in 2009, two years after the release of GPLv3, Google open-sourc...