Download ZIP. GPLv3 explained. Anyone can copy, modify and distribute this software. You have to include the license and copyright notice with each and every distribution. You can use this software privately. You can use this software for commercial purposes. If you modify it, you have to indicate changes made to the code.
This software is provided without warranty. The software author or license can not be held liable for any damages inflicted by the software.
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The GPL v3 states that: Source code must be made available when the software is distributed. This question also helps clearing further doubts: Definition of distribute in relation to the GPLv3.
The opposite — incorporating GPL 3 code into a larger work that is then licensed under Apache 2. Research indicates that open source software contributors are motivated more by a desire to learn and be part of the OSS community than by financial rewards. And many OSS developers believe in the philosophy that software should be free and accessible to everyone, which makes copyleft licenses like GPL v2 and GPL v3 particularly attractive. GPL v3 might be the better option for developers who are either based abroad or gearing their project for a global audience, as it includes improvements with regard to internationalization.
And, if a developer is planning to incorporate Apache 2. For software organizations, a major differentiator between the two GPLs is the express grant of patent rights. Lawsuits are something no company wants, and the explicit patent grant included in GPL v3 provides legal protection and a sense of security. It also has definitions to help users understand the boundaries of components used in larger works, including how to evaluate what clause to follow when a user is unsure.
To release software under GPL licenses, users need to obtain a copyright disclaimer from any superseding entity like an employer or school. Once the disclaimer is in place, each file should receive the proper copyright notices while clearly defining what versions users can use. Adding the copyright notice display at startup is optional. Developers should keep in mind that GPL intends to prevent any additional restrictions on the software.
When using any portion of GPLed software, the modified version retains the same rights. As such, the user should release the updated source to subsequent users only if the user releases the modified software to the public. But if the new GPL version has a tighter requirement, it will not restrict use of the current version of the program, because it can still be used under GPL version 3.
If a tighter requirement in a new version of the GPL need not be obeyed for existing software, how is it useful? Then users will have to follow the tighter requirements in GPL version 4, for subsequent versions of the program.
However, developers are not obligated to do this; developers can continue allowing use of the previous version of the GPL, if that is their preference. The reason you shouldn't do that is that it could result some day in withdrawing automatically some permissions that the users previously had.
At that time, people could have used it under GPLv2. Some users may not even have known about GPL version 3—but they would have been required to use it. They could have violated the program's license unintentionally just because they did not get the news. That's a bad way to treat people.
We think it is wrong to take back permissions already granted, except due to a violation. If your freedom could be revoked, then it isn't really freedom. Thus, if you get a copy of a program version under one version of a license, you should always have the rights granted by that version of the license. The GPL was designed for programs; it contains lots of complex clauses that are crucial for programs, but that would be cumbersome and unnecessary for a book or manual.
Meanwhile, the GFDL has clauses that help publishers of free manuals make a profit from selling copies—cover texts, for instance. The special rules for Endorsements sections make it possible to use the GFDL for an official standard. Using the GFDL, we permit changes in the text of a manual that covers its technical topic. It is important to be able to change the technical parts, because people who change a program ought to change the documentation to correspond.
The freedom to do this is an ethical imperative. Our manuals also include sections that state our political position about free software.
Font licensing is a complex issue which needs serious consideration. The following license exception is experimental but approved for general use.
We welcome suggestions on this subject—please see this this explanatory essay and write to licensing gnu. To use this exception, add this text to the license notice of each file in the package to the extent possible , at the end of the text that says the file is distributed under the GNU GPL:. As a special exception, if you create a document which uses this font, and embed this font or unaltered portions of this font into the document, this font does not by itself cause the resulting document to be covered by the GNU General Public License.
This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the document might be covered by the GNU General Public License. If you modify this font, you may extend this exception to your version of the font, but you are not obligated to do so.
If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. Templates are minor enough that it is not worth using copyleft to protect them.
It is normally harmless to use copyleft on minor works, but templates are a special case, because they are combined with data provided by users of the application and the combination is distributed. So, we recommend that you license your templates under simple permissive terms. Some templates make calls into JavaScript functions. Since Javascript is often non-trivial, it is worth copylefting. A line needs to be drawn between the JavaScript copylefted , and the user code usually under incompatible terms.
As a special exception to the GPL, any HTML file which merely makes function calls to this code, and for that purpose includes it by reference shall be deemed a separate work for copyright law purposes. In addition, the copyright holders of this code give you permission to combine this code with free software libraries that are released under the GNU LGPL.
If you modify this code, you may extend this exception to your version of the code, but you are not obligated to do so. Which programs you used to edit the source code, or to compile it, or study it, or record it, usually makes no difference for issues concerning the licensing of that source code.
However, if you link nonfree libraries with the source code, that would be an issue you need to deal with. It would be useful to have translations of the GPL into languages other than English. People have even written translations and sent them to us. But we have not dared to approve them as officially valid. That carries a risk so great we do not dare accept it. A legal document is in some ways like a program.
Translating it is like translating a program from one language and operating system to another. Only a lawyer skilled in both languages can do it—and even then, there is a risk of introducing a bug.
If we were to approve, officially, a translation of the GPL, we would be giving everyone permission to do whatever the translation says they can do. If it is a completely accurate translation, that is fine. But if there is an error in the translation, the results could be a disaster which we could not fix. If a program has a bug, we can release a new version, and eventually the old version will more or less disappear.
But once we have given everyone permission to act according to a particular translation, we have no way of taking back that permission if we find, later on, that it had a bug. Helpful people sometimes offer to do the work of translation for us. If the problem were a matter of finding someone to do the work, this would solve it.
But the actual problem is the risk of error, and offering to do the work does not avoid the risk. We could not possibly authorize a translation written by a non-lawyer. Therefore, for the time being, we are not approving translations of the GPL as globally valid and binding.
Instead, we are doing two things:. Referring people to unofficial translations. This means that we permit people to write translations of the GPL, but we don't approve them as legally valid and binding.
An unapproved translation has no legal force, and it should say so explicitly. It should be marked as follows:. To be completely sure of what is permitted, refer to the original GPL in English. But the unapproved translation can serve as a hint for how to understand the English GPL. For many users, that is sufficient. However, businesses using GNU software in commercial activity, and people doing public ftp distribution, should need to check the real English GPL to make sure of what it permits.
We are considering the idea of publishing translations which are officially valid only for one country. This way, if there is a mistake, it will be limited to that country, and the damage will not be too great. It will still take considerable expertise and effort from a sympathetic and capable lawyer to make a translation, so we cannot promise any such translations soon.
When the interpreter just interprets a language, the answer is yes. The interpreted program, to the interpreter, is just data; the GPL doesn't restrict what tools you process the program with. The JNI or Java Native Interface is an example of such a facility; libraries that are accessed in this way are linked dynamically with the Java programs that call them.
So if these facilities are released under a GPL-incompatible license, the situation is like linking in any other way with a GPL-incompatible library. Which implies that:. Since the GPL is a copyright license, the copyright holders of the software are the ones who have the power to enforce the GPL. They either are the copyright holders, or are connected with the copyright holders. Learn more about reporting GPL violations. Subclassing is creating a derivative work. In general, the answer is no—this is not a legal requirement.
In specific, the answer depends on which libraries you want to use and what their licenses are. These libraries can be used in nonfree programs; but in the case of the Lesser GPL, it does have some requirements you must follow.
But these are normally the more specialized libraries, and you would not have had anything much like them on another platform, so you probably won't find yourself wanting to use these libraries for simple porting. Of course, your software is not a contribution to our community if it is not free, and people who value their freedom will refuse to use it. Only people willing to give up their freedom will use your software, which means that it will effectively function as an inducement for people to lose their freedom.
If you hope some day to look back on your career and feel that it has contributed to the growth of a good and free society, you need to make your software free. The GPL does not require anyone to use the Internet for distribution. It also does not require anyone in particular to redistribute the program. And outside of one special case , even if someone does decide to redistribute the program sometimes, the GPL doesn't say he has to distribute a copy to you in particular, or any other person in particular.
What the GPL requires is that he must have the freedom to distribute a copy to you if he wishes to. Once the copyright holder does distribute a copy of the program to someone, that someone can then redistribute the program to you, or to anyone else, as he sees fit.
Such a license would be self-contradictory. Let's look at its implications for me as a user. Suppose I start with the original version call it version A , add some code let's imagine it is lines , and release that modified version call it B under the GPL.
So I or someone else can delete those lines, producing version C which has the same code as version A but is under the GPL. If you try to block that path, by saying explicitly in the license that I'm not allowed to reproduce something identical to version A under the GPL by deleting those lines from version B, in effect the license now says that I can't fully use version B in all the ways that the GPL permits.
In other words, the license does not in fact allow a user to release a modified version such as B under the GPL. The GPL does not and cannot override local laws. US copyright law is not entirely clear on the point, but appears not to consider this distribution.
If, in some country, this is considered distribution, and the subsidiary must receive the right to redistribute the program, that will not make a practical difference. The subsidiary is controlled by the parent company; rights or no rights, it won't redistribute the program unless the parent company decides to do so. Some software packaging systems have a place which requires you to click through or otherwise indicate assent to the terms of the GPL. This is neither required nor forbidden. With or without a click through, the GPL's rules remain the same.
Merely agreeing to the GPL doesn't place any obligations on you. You are not required to agree to anything to merely use software which is licensed under the GPL. You only have obligations if you modify or distribute the software. The installer and the files it installs are separate works. As a result, the terms of the GPL do not apply to the installation software.
This is not a violation of the GPL. Those distributors almost all of whom are commercial businesses selling free software distributions and related services are trying to reduce their own legal risks, not to control your behavior.
Export control law in the United States might make them liable if they knowingly export software into certain countries, or if they give software to parties they know will make such exports.
By asking for these statements from their customers and others to whom they distribute software, they protect themselves in the event they are later asked by regulatory authorities what they knew about where software they distributed was going to wind up. They are not restricting what you can do with the software, only preventing themselves from being blamed with respect to anything you do. Because they are not placing additional restrictions on the software, they do not violate section 10 of GPLv3 or section 6 of GPLv2.
Not only are such laws incompatible with the general objective of software freedom, they achieve no reasonable governmental purpose, because free software is currently and should always be available from parties in almost every country, including countries that have no export control laws and which do not participate in US-led trade embargoes.
Therefore, no country's government is actually deprived of free software by US export control laws, while no country's citizens should be deprived of free software, regardless of their governments' policies, as far as we are concerned.
Copies of all GPL-licensed software published by the FSF can be obtained from us without making any representation about where you live or what you intend to do.
They have a right to choose to whom they distribute particular copies of free software; exercise of that right does not violate the GPL unless they add contractual restrictions beyond those permitted by the GPL. In this scenario, the requirement to keep paying a fee limits the user's ability to run the program. This is an additional requirement on top of the GPL, and the license prohibits it.
First, include the new version of the license in your package. Second, replace all your existing v2 license notices usually at the top of each file with the new recommended text available on the GNU licenses howto. It's more future-proof because it no longer includes the FSF's postal mailing address.
Of course, any descriptive text such as in a README which talks about the package's license should also be updated appropriately. Because GPLv2 was written before peer-to-peer distribution of software was common, it is difficult to meet its requirements when you share code this way. The best way to make sure you are in compliance when distributing GPLv2 object code on BitTorrent would be to include all the corresponding source in the same torrent, which is prohibitively expensive. GPLv3 addresses this problem in two ways.
First, people who download this torrent and send the data to others as part of that process are not required to do anything. Second, section 6 e of GPLv3 is designed to give distributors—people who initially seed torrents—a clear and straightforward way to provide the source, by telling recipients where it is available on a public network server.
This ensures that everyone who wants to get the source can do so, and it's almost no hassle for the distributor. Some devices utilize free software that can be upgraded, but are designed so that users are not allowed to modify that software.
There are lots of different ways to do this; for example, sometimes the hardware checksums the software that is installed, and shuts down if it doesn't match an expected signature. The manufacturers comply with GPLv2 by giving you the source code, but you still don't have the freedom to modify the software you're using. We call this practice tivoization. When people distribute User Products that include software under GPLv3, section 6 requires that they provide you with information necessary to modify that software.
User Products is a term specially defined in the license; examples of User Products include portable music players, digital video recorders, and home security systems. Any material that can be copyrighted can be licensed under the GPL.
GPLv3 can also be used to license materials covered by other copyright-like laws, such as semiconductor masks. So, as an example, you can release a drawing of a physical object or circuit under the GPL.
In many situations, copyright does not cover making physical hardware from a drawing. In these situations, your license for the drawing simply can't exert any control over making or selling physical hardware, regardless of the license you use.
When copyright does cover making hardware, for instance with IC masks, the GPL handles that case in a useful way. The only time you would be required to release signing keys is if you conveyed GPLed software inside a User Product, and its hardware checked the software for a valid cryptographic signature before it would function. In that specific case, you would be required to provide anyone who owned the device, on demand, with the key to sign and install modified software on the device so that it will run.
If each instance of the device uses a different key, then you need only give each purchaser a key for that instance.
Companies distributing devices that include software under GPLv3 are at most required to provide the source and Installation Information for the software to people who possess a copy of the object code. The voter who uses a voting machine like any other kiosk doesn't get possession of it, not even temporarily, so the voter also does not get possession of the binary software in it.
Note, however, that voting is a very special case. Just because the software in a computer is free does not mean you can trust the computer for voting. We believe that computers cannot be trusted for voting. Voting should be done on paper. In effect, yes. Section 10 prohibits people who convey the software from filing patent suits against other licensees. If someone did so anyway, section 8 explains how they would lose their license and any patent licenses that accompanied it.
If the snippets are small enough that you can incorporate them under fair use or similar laws, then yes.
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