The GNU GPL was not designed to be "open source"

The GNU GPL was not designed to be "open source"

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, is often credited with creating the GNU General Public License (GPL), which is one of the most widely used open source licenses in the world. However, it is important to note that the GPL was not actually designed to be "open source" in the way that term is commonly understood today.

Stallman's motivation for creating the GPL was not to promote the idea of open source software, but rather to protect the freedoms of users and developers of software. He believed that software should be free in the sense of freedom, not necessarily in the sense of price. Stallman was concerned about the increasing trend of proprietary software, which restricted users' ability to modify, share, and distribute the software they used.

The GPL was designed to ensure that software released under it would always remain free and open for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. It does this by requiring that any derivative works of GPL-licensed software must also be released under the GPL, thus ensuring that the freedoms granted by the license are passed on to future users and developers.

While the GPL does promote the idea of open source software in the sense that it allows for the sharing and collaboration of code, Stallman's primary goal was to protect the freedoms of users and developers, rather than to promote the idea of open source as a business model or development methodology.