GNU General Public License 3.0

Nothing on this page is a substitute for the full license text!

For real, I encourage you to read the above links because I am not an expert at software licensing! This page is provided as a courtesy overview for those who have no idea what the GPL is in even the simplest terms!

The GNU General Public License 3.0 (GPL) is a free software license created by the Free Software Foundation. The Free Software Foundation does not in any way enforce the license or officially endorse any projects that use the license, they merely publish a standardized license in the hopes of protecting software freedom. Likewise, use of this license does not in any way, shape, or form indicate AniMerrill Productions' endorsement of Richard Stallman or his actions -- the GPL is just an unfortunately powerful software license in the open source world and we use it because it aligns with our ideals for software. On this website, the GPL currently only covers the source code for the website itself. Any of the multimedia assets used as content on the website are covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license.

(Please note, there is both a "General" license and a "Lesser" license which omits certain restrictions, and this website uses the General version.)

In the simplest terms, this license gives you the freedom to do the following with any software licensed under GPL:

When a developer releases a piece of software under GPL, that software remains free forever. The GPL attempts to codify what is known as "copyleft" which uses copyright law to protect the rights of all users rather than those of an exclusive owner. The GPL has many terms which developers and contributors should be aware of, but these restrictions are ultimately in service of preventing behavior which seeks to undermine the free nature of GPL software. When it was first written in 1989, the GPL was a revolutionary idea; today it is a proven standard which the thriving open source community is built upon. We now live in a world that benefits from decades of open source software development, and world likely wouldn't exist if it weren't for the protections that the GPL fights for-- whether under the GPL or another compatible license.

Please be mindful however, as not everything on the website falls under CC BY-SA or GPL. For anything licensed differently, this will be indicated where possible and listed on the Third-Party Licenses page.