The gnu gpl is an enforceable contract at last hackaday. The gnu general public license gnu gpl or simply gpl is a widely used open source software license, originally written by richard stallman for the gnu project. Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail. You can charge people a fee to get a copy from you. Most surveys indicate that the vast majority of open source projects use the mit license, the apache license, and the gpl or their variants. Panasonic allegedly refused to distribute the source code for its operating system, and by doing this, blocked its competitors including cokinetic from having the. Software as a service and gnu gpl licensing are not always linked. When distributing derived works, the source code of the work must be made available under the same license. Insert the word lesser before general in all three places in the boilerplate notice to make sure that you refer to the gnu lgplv3 and not the gnu gplv3. Gnu general public license, version 3 spdx short identifier. The holders of the gpl software can choose to enforce the gpl on the distributed or derivative works of the software. Why the gpl is incompatible with commercial software.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute andor modify this document under the terms of the gnu free documentation license, version 1. You should have received a copy of the gnu general public license along with this program. The choice of licence comes down to personal preference, and both approaches can have good or bad. What is the difference between gpl, agpl and lgpl licenses. Gpl requires that the software be distributed in sourcecode form, and stipulates that any user can. The question is specific to using these tools to develop commercial software the source or the binaries of the gpl licensed tool does not become part of the commercial software in anyway i do not want to modify the gpl licensed tool. Gpl lgpl gpl gpl, lgpl both are created by the gnu project the gpl and lgpl prohibit covered software and all derivative work from having its source code hidden from the public assumption. These are examples of the license accompanying code, and you can find other examples at the gpl has nothing to do with whether you charge for the software or distribute it for free.
They led to a new era of software development where sharing and improving as a community is more valuable than selling proprietary software maybe because we stopped selling software altogether and started selling services. For example, if you are using the software on your own companys equipment, but you are making the functionality of the software available to users interacting with it remotely. Software licensed under the gnu general public license is free software, and all software that builds on gpllicensed components is also free and must also be licensed under the gpl. The software included in this product contains ed software that is licensed under the gpl. This does not mean tjhat you cannot sell the product, but it does mean that you must provide your licensees, on request, with its source code. In some senses, thats very permissive because the aggregate permissiveness is maximized. After you find the file, you can change to that directory and type more copying to read the gpl.
These are examples of the license accompanying code, and you can find other examples at gnu. If you use gpl code, your code becomes covered by the gpl and you cannot provide a license for it that removes the stritures of the gnu license. Gnu gpl, lgpl, apache licence types and differences. Pages in category software using the gpl license the following 150 pages are in this category, out of 150 total. By contrast, the gnu general public license is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a programto make sure it remains free software for all its users. The gpl license grants the users irrevocable rights to use, modify and redistribute software even commercially under the condition that software or its derivatives retain the gpl license and.
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. Using gpllicensed components in proprietary projects. Gnu public license is all but free and you should never. If you have some code you are thinking of releasing under an open source license, and you want a quick overview of the broadstrokes differences between these licenses, you have come to the right place. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. For example, the fsf holds the s on many pieces of the gnu system, such as the gnu compiler collection.
Advocates of the gnu general public license gnu gpl like to perpetuate the idea that programs released under it are free as in speech, not free as in beer. Relationships between the gpl licences and other software are carefully explained in the gpl faq. Stallmans and free software foundations opinion overrides our opinion on both software as a service and gnu gpl licensing. Frequently asked questions about the gnu licenses gnu. Gnu gpl and source control source code control lava. For further information, see our list of frequently asked questions about our licenses. Most gpl version 2 software is actually licensed as gpl version 2 or any later version, or. Its built with and comes with an awful lot of gpld software. The problem is that in the site there are a lot of fonts free for commercial use under gpl gnu license but without the font exception like for example dustismo font. Qgis is a user friendly open source geographic information system gis licensed under the gnu general public license. If that commercial application is what youre selling, then youre giving a copy of that software in exchange for money. The free software foundation recommends taking the additional step of adding a boilerplate notice to the top of each file.
See the gnu general public license for more details. You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changesdates of in source files and keep modifications under gpl. Gpl, also known as copyleft, grants permission to reuse or modify the source code to make derivative works, but if you distribute your program to others, it requires you to license your derivative work under the gpl too. Agpl ghostscript is provided under the gnu affero general public license agpl, as well as under an artifex commercial license. For this reason gpl gnu team create the font exception that allows you to use any other license in your documents or artwork where gpl gnu licensed font was used. However, businesses using gnu software in commercial activity, and people doing public ftp. Examples of software commonly used under the gpl are the linux kernel and the rest of the gnu linux operating system, including the gcc compiler, git, filezilla and wordpress, just to name a few. This is a brief explanation of how to place a program under the gnu general public license, gnu lesser general public license, or gnu affero general public license. The implication is that gpled software is not necessarily free from cost, and therefore you can in fact license your programs under the gpl and still sell them for money. The most widespread such license is the gnu general public license, or gnu gpl for short. You should have received a copy of the gnu general public license along with this software. We are explaining some of the most commonly asked parts. Gnu general public license software as part of commercial.
To get more specific, here the template of my choice licensed under gnugpl. The gpl has nothing to do with whether you charge for the software or distribute it for free. You can distribute your application using a gpl library commercially, but you must also provide the source code. You cant require people to pay you when they get a copy from someone else. Code released under the gnu affero general public license agpl or the server side public license. Can gnu licensed software be used for commercial gain. If software is licenced under a gpl license, can it be used without restriction in a corporatecommercial environment. For the gnu free documentation license, we have a separate page. A copy of that license is included in this document on page x. We, the free software foundation, use the gnu general public license for most of our software. The gnu gpl requires that when you use gpllicensed software to make other software and release it to the public, the resulting software must be opensourced with the same license. Can i use a software tool licensed with gpl in commercial.
You may obtain the complete corresponding source code from us for a period of three years after our last shipment of this product, which will be no earlier than 20110801, by sending a money order or. The free software foundation may publish revised andor new versions of the gnu lesser general public license from time to time. The following licenses are sorted by the number of conditions, from most gnu agplv3 to none unlicense. If youre just using a gpled tool to manage your code or your workflow for example, source control but your code doesnt actually need the tool to function, then you are not required to apply the gpl license to your own code and share it on the other hand, if you incorporate a gpled. 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. If you want an example of including gpld software as part of a commercial offering, look at os x. A practical guide to gpl compliance software freedom law. The free software foundation and its sprout the gnu project are a core element of the free and open source software movement. The gpl guarantees everyone with the software identical permissions. This means that developers writing commercial software may not be able to use gpl code if they do not wish to provide the code. Revised versions of the gnu lesser general public license.
Any software written using gpld code must itself be licensed using the gpl or less restrictive license meaning it cannot be proprietary. The software that i am refering to is qgis which provides this description. The firefox browser uses a similar copyleft license. Say, for example, that a small software company determines that part of a widely distributed and used gpllicensed program, such as the gnulinux kernel, infringes on a software patent that it holds. This can be further shortened to gpl, when it is understood that the gnu gpl is the one intended. The boilerplate can be found at the end of the gnu gplv3 license. In practice, this could have dire consequences on the consumers of gpllicensed software. Gplcompatible software is software whose conditions of propagation, modification and use would permit combination with gcc in accord with the license of gcc. The gnu gpl is the most widely used free software license and has a strong copyleft requirement.
Gpl and lgpl refer to their latest versions the latest version of the lgpl. Open source licenses grant permission for anybody to use, modify, and share licensed software for any purpose, subject to conditions preserving the provenance and openness of the software. It is therefore often thought that gpllicensed software is unsuitable for proprietary projects. The gnu general public license gnu gpl or gpl is a widely used free software license, which guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share and modify the software.
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