Richard Stallman—Published GNU General Public License v1, establishing copyleft licensing
In 1989, Richard Stallman published the first version of the GNU General Public License (GPL), the first copyleft license. The GPL ensured that software and its derivatives remain free, preventing proprietary capture. The GPL became the most widely used free software license, used by Linux, Git, and thousands of other projects, fundamentally shaping the open-source ecosystem.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| Open Source Licensing Integrity | +toward | primary | +1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | +1.180 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (critical ×2) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
Richard Stallman published GNU General Public License v1
In 1989, Stallman published the first version of the GNU GPL, the first copyleft license. The GPL ensured that software and its derivatives remain free, preventing proprietary capture. It became the most widely used free software license.