General Public License - Simple English Wikipedia

# General Public License

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The General Publi License or GPL is a kind of copyleft license for free software. Richard Stallman created it. He wanted to stop software hoarding. Stallman had had a problem with software hoarding before. He had given the company "Symbolics" some software with a public domain copyright. Symbolics made it better, but did not want to give Stallman the new code. That is allowed by law because public domain software has no restrictions on making the software proprietary software, because public domain is no copyright at all. So someone can take public domain software and redistribute a derivative work from it, and license it with a very proprietary license.

The GPL allows everything a public domain license allows, except that derivative works must also be under the GPL. For example, if Person A makes Software B and releases it under the GPL, and later Person C changes Software B to make Software D, then Software D also has to be under the GPL.

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