GNU General Public License
In the past,the GPL license family has been one of the most popular software licenses in the free and open-source software domain.Famous open source software programs licensed under the GPL involve the Linux kernel and the GNU Compiler Collection. David A Wheeler declares that the copyleft provided by the GPL was crucial to the success of Linux-based systems, gave the programmers who have contributed to the kernel the guarantee that their work would be profitable the whole world, remain free, rather than being utilize by software companies.
Overview of the GNU System
A longer version called the GNU Manifesto was published in March 1985. It is translated into many languages. The name “GNU” was elected because it met a few requirements; first, it was a repeated composition for “GNU’s Not Unix”, second, because it was a real word, and third, it is fun to say that the project to develop the GNU system is called the “GNU Project”. The GNU Project was designed in 1983 and it’s aim was of bringing back the co-operative spirit that influence in computing group in earlier days — to make co-operation possible once again by removing the barrier to cooperation inflict by the owners of corrective software.
In the year 1971, when Richard Stallman started his career at MIT, he worked in a company which used free software regularly. Even computer companies often distributed free software. Programmers are free to cooperate with each other.
By the year 1980s, all software was corrective, which means that it had owners who prohibit and prevent co-operation by users. This made the GNU Project necessary.
Every Particular computer user needs an operating system; if there is no free operating system, then you can’t even start using a computer.Hence the first item on the free software programme obviously should be a free operating system.
An Unix operating system includes a kernel, compilers, editors, text for matters, mail software, graphical interfaces, libraries, games etc. Hence writing a overall operating system is a very huge job.The Free Software Foundation was founded in October 1985, initially to raise funds to help and develop GNU.
By the year 1990 they have founded or written all the huge topics except one — the kernel. Then Linux, a Unix-like kernel, was developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and made free software in 1992. Evaluation are that ten millions of people now use GNU/Linux systems, typically via GNU/Linux distributions. The principal version of Linux now contains non-free firmware “blobs”; free software activists now maintain a modified free version of Linux, called Linux-libre.
However, the GNU Project is not limited to the basic operating system. They now aim to provide a whole variety of software, whatever many users want to have. This now includes the application software.
GNU wants to provide software for users who are not computer experts. Therefore we developed a graphical desktop (called GNOME) to help beginners use the GNU system.
Conclusions of GNU and GPL
The main aim of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. Hence they needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software from being turned into corrective software.
The term “free software” is sometimes misunderstable— it has nothing to do with price but it is about the free software. Hence therefore it is the definition of free software.
A program is free software, for you, a particular user, if:
- You have the benefit to run the program in freedom as you wish, for any purpose.
- You will be having the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the company can benefit from your improvements.
- You have the freedom to redistribute copies.
Hence“free” refers to freedom, not to price, there is no refutation between selling copies and free software.
