You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License (. . .)
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions (...)
If, as a consequence of a court judgement or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License (...)
If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License (. . .)
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program in proprietary programs.”
Comments
The following are advantages of the license:
- Freedom of use: Commercial and noncommercial use without notification is directly expressed.
- Mandatory attribution to the author and rights holder translates into incentives for both authors and their sponsors.
- The license automatically applies to virtually all derivatives from GPL-licensed work, which ensures advantages to the public and right holders.
