GNU Project and free software (GPL)
Proyecto GNU y licencia de software libre (GPL)
- Date
- 1983-1985 · confidence high
- Place
- MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation); the GPL in 1989
- People
- 👤 Richard Stallman1953–
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Movement and legal framework that guarantees the freedom to use, study, modify and redistribute software through copyleft. It created the infrastructure (GCC, Emacs, bash) on which Linux was built.
What it led to
- Linux, Android and the open-source infrastructure of the internet
- Open-source business models and global collaboration (GitHub)
- Debates over licensing, digital commons and open AI model weights
Built on
- Unix operating system1969
- MIT hacker culture
- software copyright
Made possible
- Linux kernel1991
- Wiki and Wikipedia1995
- Arduino open-source microcontroller platform2005
- GCC
- Wikipedia (free licences)
- open source