The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. Widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software.
The license was originally written by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project, and grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derivative work 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 widely used examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use.
When they speak of free software, they are referring to freedom, not price. General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
Free as in freedom
The term “free software” is sometimes misunderstood—it has nothing to do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition of free software.
A program is free software, for you, a particular user, if :
- You have the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
- You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is exceedingly difficult.)
- You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
- You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.
Since “free” refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are important for the community, and selling them is an important way to raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program which people are not free to include on these collections is not free software.
Because of the ambiguity of “free”, people have long looked for alternatives, but no one has found a better term. The English language has more words and nuances than any other, but it lacks a simple, unambiguous, word that means “free”, as in freedom—“unfettered” being the word that comes closest in meaning. Such alternatives as “liberated”, “freedom”, and “open” have either the wrong meaning or some other disadvantage.
Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps: (1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.
For the developers' and authors' protection, the GPL clearly explains that there is no warranty for this free software. For both users' and authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to authors of previous versions.
The latest versions of GPL is v3 that published 11 years ago at 29 June 2007So, that is the meaning of general public license that I know and pasted from the original source. If there is fault, please, I am sorry and hope its helpful for all who read it and there is the link below if youn want understand more, hope to see you again.
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