There are no frontcover texts, no backcover texts, and no invariant sections. Can i use gpl software in a commercial application software. Gnu public license is all but free and you should never use it. The free software foundation fsf distributes gcc under the gnu general public license gnu gpl, which is the source of an amazing variety of tools and utilities that, when combined with the linux kernel, provide a complete operating system.
Richard stallman created the gpl to protect the gnu software from being made proprietary. The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your freedom to share and change the works. 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 general public license software as part of commercial. Note, however, that there is no worldwide principle of fair use. A short guide to open source licenses smashing magazine.
Oracle offers a commercial license for all of its mysql software that is embedded in or bundled with another application. A practical guide to gpl compliance software freedom law. 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. There is a nice frequently asked questions faq page. Qt for application development lets you create applications for desktop and mobile platforms. This general public license applies to most of the free software foundations software and to. The gnu general public license is a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. 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. 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. Can gpl licenced software be used in corporate environments. The gnu free documentation license gnu fdl or simply gfdl is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the free software foundation fsf for the gnu project. Most gpl version 2 software is actually licensed as gpl version 2 or any later version, or. This is a lax, permissive noncopyleft free software license, compatible with the gnu gpl.
The gnu, or general public license, is a free software license that offers users freedom to operate, study, share, and modify the software. Various licenses and comments about them gnu project. This page is intended to provide a summary of information that developers and companies may find useful in understanding licensing. Does all gnu software use the gnu gpl as its license.
It is similar to the gnu general public license, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify except for invariant sections a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Why the gpl is incompatible with commercial software. Agpl ghostscript is provided under the gnu affero general public license agpl, as well as under an artifex commercial license. The licenses used by gnu are the free software foundation family of licenses. The usual disclaimers apply, this is not legal advice. For example, if you write some software and release it under the gnu general public license a widelyused copyleft license, and then someone else modifies that software and distributes their modified version, the modified version must be licensed under the gnu gpl too including any new code written specifically to go into the modified. Qgis is an official project of the open source geospatial foundation osgeo. It grants fewer rights to a work than the standard gpl. There are multiple variants of the gnu gpl, each with different requirements.
No commercial software, no code that you keep for yourself, no way to. The majority of all open source projects are licensed under gpl version 2. Frequently answered questions open source initiative. The software that i am refering to is qgis which provides this description. Difference between different types of open sources licenses. Frequently asked questions about the gnu licenses gnu. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Modification of l gpld components suggests contribution back to the creatormaintainer. Html, plain text, odf, docbook v4 or v5, texinfo, latex, markdown, and rtf. Gimp is an acronym for gnu image manipulation program.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. The software included in this product contains ed software that is licensed under the gpl. Can i use gpl software binaries in commercial environment. To use the gpl, you have to include certain information in the softwares code, along with a copy of the license.
However, businesses using gnu software in commercial activity, and people. Marco fioretti answers a techrepublic members questions about charging fees for software thats made available under the gnu gpl. Commercial software was once considered to be proprietary software, but now a number of free and opensource software applications are licensed or sold to end users. You can distribute your application using a gpl library commercially, but you must also provide the source code. 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. Preamble the gnu general public license is a free, copyleft license for. It is used to distribute a number of important open source software projects, including the linux kernel.
Frequently asked questions about the gnu licenses gnu project. 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 gnu general public license gpl is a free, copyleft license used primarily for software. We have designed this license in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation. This is an attempt to clarify the most important issues. Stet was the first software system known to be released under the gnu agpl, on november 21, 2007, and is the only known program to be used mainly for the production of its own license flask developer armin ronacher noted in 20 that the gnu agpl is a terrible success, especially among the startup community as a vehicle for dual commercial licensing, and gave humhub, mongodb, openerp. The free software foundation and its sprout the gnu project are a core element of the free and open source software movement. This is a free software license, compatible with the gnu gpl. Gnu general public license v3 gpl3 explained in plain english. After you find the file, you can change to that directory and type more copying to read the gpl. Ffmpeg is licensed under the gnu lesser general public license lgpl version 2. When distributing derived works, the source code of the work must be made available under the same license. A copy of that license is included in this document on page x.
Gnu public license is all but free and you should never. The gnu general public license since version 2 has defined source code as the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. The commercial qt license gives you the full rights to create and distribute software on your own terms without any. This latter point distinguishes the gpl from software licenses that prohibit commercial redistribution. The terms of usage and rules about copying are clearly listed in the gnu general public license. The following licenses are sorted by the number of conditions, from most gnu agplv3 to none unlicense.
The gnu gpl allows users to change and share all versions of a program. I have a concern of using gpl v2 and gpl v3 licensed software in commercial production environment. 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. Legal issues are a constant source of questions and confusion. This is intended to prevent the release of obfuscated source code. The commercial license allows oems, isvs and vars to distribute commercial binaries of mysql software with their own commercial software without subjecting that software to the gpl and its requirement to distribute source. I wont modify anything from source code and the architecture of the system requires the use of a load balancer. If software is licenced under a gpl license, can it be used without restriction in a corporatecommercial environment.
Gpl is provided through the free software foundation, a nonprofit corporation that works to provide free software for the gnu project. The gnu gpl is the most widely used free software license and has a strong copyleft requirement. The gnu gpl requires that when you use gpllicensed software to make some other software, the resulting software also has to be opensourced with. By contrast, the gnu general public license is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free softwareto make sure the software is free for all its users. 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. If i use gpl software in my application, but dont modify or distribute it, do i have to release my application under the gpl. Describes the ability to use the software for commercial purposes.
The gnu general public license is available in these formats. Version 2 of the gnu general public license gpl is probably the most commonly used open source software license. The gnu general public license gnu gpl or gpl is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software. It is a lax, permissive noncopyleft free software license, compatible with the gnu gpl. These licenses have the restriction that you are obliged to include the source code and release your software under the same license if you distribute the softeware. Qgis is a user friendly open source geographic information system gis licensed under the gnu general public license. An effort that started with the free software foundation fsf in 1991, its now a popular choice for open source projects. You may copy, distribute and modify the software as long as you track changesdates of in source files and keep modifications under gpl.
Top 10 gnu gpl license questions answered whitesource. It contains all the qt apis and the qt creator ide for seamless crossplatform development qt for application development is duallicensed under commercial and open source licenses. The gnu general public license is often called the gnu gpl for short. 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 free software definition. Top 10 best open source softwares that rocks world wide. 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 that the source code is included or. For more detailed and complete information on the agpl please visit the gnu web site. I would like to use haproxy as a load balancing solution.
456 1192 805 331 1156 1311 506 980 1208 999 399 72 943 143 198 84 722 311 312 1385 426 1339 1504 731 1047 224 167 484 1030 1491 710 1469 816 329 199 139