Promoting the Open Source project and community
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code,[1] design documents,[2] or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration.[3][4] A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology,[5] and open-source drug discovery.[6][7]
GNU : Gnu’s Not Unix
GNU (/ɡnuː/ ⓘ)[3][4] is an extensive collection of free software (385 packages as of September 2023[5]), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems.[6][7][8] The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operating systems popularly known as Linux.[9] Most of GNU is licensed under the GNU Project‘s own General Public License (GPL).
GNU is also the project within which the free software concept originated. Richard Stallman, the founder of the project, views GNU as a “technical means to a social end”.[10] Relatedly, Lawrence Lessig states in his introduction to the second edition of Stallman’s book Free Software, Free Society that in it Stallman has written about “the social aspects of software and how Free Software can create community and social justice”.[11]
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL)
is a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software.[7] The license was the first copyleft for general use, and was originally written by Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the GNU Project. The license grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition.[8] The licenses in the GPL series are all copyleft licenses, which means that any derivative work must be distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. It is more restrictive than the Lesser General Public License, and even further distinct from the more widely-used permissive software licenses BSD, MIT, and Apache.
