Short for GNU General Public License, the GPL is a general license published by GNU project. Any software author may use the GPL to legally control the way their software may be used by others. It is a copyleft license, meaning that any code derived from GPL-licensed code must also be licensed under the GPL.

Guaranteed freedoms

Anyone who uses GPL-licensed software, and abides by the license terms, is guaranteed four fundamental freedoms as defined by the Free Software Foundation:

  • The freedom to run the program as you want, for any purpose.
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you want.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you may help your neighbor.
  • The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.

Business terms, Computer acronyms, LGPL, Open-source, Programming terms

  • Additional information about the GPL is published at the official GNU website.