GNU General Public License

Noun · Open Source

Definitions

  1. A family of strong copyleft licenses, commonly called the GPL, requiring that distributed derivative works also provide source code under the same license terms. It is one of the most influential and debated licenses in free software history.

    In plain English: A major open source license that requires modified distributed versions to remain under the same license.

    Example: "The legal team flagged the dependency because the GNU General Public License would affect how redistributed binaries had to be handled."

Related Terms