GPL (General Public License) is a free software license originallywritten by Richard Stallman for the GNU project.
The GPL license gives the recipient of a copy of the software the rights of free software and uses copyleft to ensure the same freedoms are applied to subsequent versions of the work.
The last version of this license, version 2, was released in 1991.
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is another version of the GPL, intended for the use of some software libraries.
By some measures, the GPL is the most popular free and open source software license.
As of January 2006, the GPL is used by 66% of the 41,962 free software listed on Freshmeat, and 68% of all free software listed on SourceForge.net.
GPL is a license that states that an intellectual work (usually software) is free to be used, copied, distributed, and even developed by anyone without having to pay or get permission first.
GPL or when translated into General Public License was first created by Richard Stallman for software development projects under the GNU flag.
GNU itself is a foundation that makes free software including Linux.
As its development, GPL is not only used by GNU and Linux.
Now there are more than 60,000 applications that declare themselves licensed under the GPL.
Especially for application matters, currently the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been established, which is a worldwide association of free software makers.
For GPL adherents, intellectual works – like science – are essentially not copyrightable.
It comes from a ‘Pure Idea’ and should be enjoyed by all humanity as it is a natural right.
‘Pure ideas’ are different from merchandise such as tables and chairs that require production costs.
A ‘Pure Idea’ is like a revelation, it comes naturally directly from ‘up above’, so it is only right that it be disseminated for the sake of common progress.
The various provisions of the GPL are outlined in the GPL paragraphs.
The GPL agreement itself has undergone three refinements to date, the latest of which is the GPL version 3 (GPLv3).
Funding Source
Then how do these software foundations finance themselves?
Usually from two sources, the first is from advertising and the second is from donations, both by software users and companies that feel benefited by the existence of the software.
Indeed, GPL cannot make software makers as rich as Bill Gates, but the fact proves that they are more appreciated and respected, both by their users and by the science developers themselves.
It must also be recognized that without the GPL agreement, the development of science and information technology would not be what it is today.
Just imagine, if PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, Apache, Joomla, E-commerce, WordPress, and Mozzila were not under the GPL license, the internet would not be this advanced, online shops would be lame, websites would only be monopolized by certain people, online businesses would only belong to those with money, and even this blog would not exist.
The GPL is an amazing breakthrough that has made giant software companies like Microsoft and Adobe burn.
How could it not?
The open nature of GPL programs allows everyone to develop and improve them freely.
The results were amazing, many GPL software proved to be more perfect than paid software, for example, Firefox or Opera that we are currently using (try to compare with Internet Explore).
Compare the flexibility of PHP & MySQL with Ms ASP & Ms SQLServer.
Community
Various communities of GPL software users and developers began to emerge.
Usually these communities strongly reject the use of commercial software.
They use Linux for the operating system, type with OpenOffice, surf with Firefox, read emails with Thunderbird, blog with WordPress or Blogspot, create websites with Joomla, manage servers with CPanel, create 3D animations with Blender, open photos with Fastone, edit images with Gimp, and so on.
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or GPL) was created by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.
The GPL positions itself as the opposite of the BSD license.
While the BSD license style allows commercial use without any restrictions and allows the creation of proprietary derivative works without restrictions, the GPL is explicitly designed to prevent the creation of proprietary software derived from open source software.
This is done by the “copyleft” method which requires:
Programs licensed as GPL must be distributed without license fees and always make the program code available;
Deliverables derived from GPL-licensed programs must be licensed as GPL as well.
The GPL has a fairly broad definition of what constitutes a GPL program, which is “any distributed or published work that is partially or wholly derived from or contains GPL program code”.
In addition to modified versions of a GPL program, this statement also clearly regulates programs that include code snippets from GPL programs or executables that are statically linked to GPL-licensed libraries.
No matter what the original license of the newly created program code is, the GPL license states that:
If you distribute the same part (e.g. not under GPL license) as a piece of work derived from a program (e.g. licensed under GPL), then the entire distribution should use
This license (GPL license), applies to all users and to every part no matter who wrote the program code.
As a result, if you use GPL program code in a propietary program that contains your own program code, then you must make your program code available under the same license as the original GPL program code.
Case
There are two interesting cases related to this.
First, when a propietary program is dynamically linked to GPL program code.
The second is when a GPL program is dynamically linked to the code of a propietary program.
The latter case arises when a GPL program uses facilities that are already available in the system, such as C run-time libraries or GUI toolkit libraries; the GPL allows the exclusion of the inclusion of propietary library program code if it is distributed normally (in the form of program code or binaries) along with the main components (compiler, kernel, etc.) of the operating system.
In the first case, Richard Stallman claims that if a software developer uses GPL program code to write program code that is designed to be dynamically linked as a library to a proprietary program (for example, a GPL-licensed module or plug-in for a proprietary image processing program) then the software developer has violated the GPL license.
Stallman then goes on to explain that if the software developer writes the GPL part of the program code from scratch, then the developer can grant specific rights to use the program code in this way, or if using another developer’s GPL program code, he can ask the developer for permission to grant rights to use it in this way.
Conclusion
But this does not change the intent of the GPL: Stallman still claims that “a GPL-licensed plug-in combined with a non-free main program is a form of combination program, and is a violation of the GPL license”.
However, the understanding of what is a combination program and a derivative program is a question for the court judge.
If there is a disagreement about this in court, they may agree or disagree with Stallman.
