[[understanding-gpl]]

=== Concept: Drupal Licensing

[role="summary"]
Overview of Drupal licensing and the guidelines to be followed by users and contributors.

(((Licensing,overview)))
(((Drupal licensing,overview)))
(((GPL (General Public License or GNU General Public License),overview)))
(((GNU General Public License,overview)))
(((Legal,overview)))

==== Prerequisite knowledge

<<understanding-drupal>>

==== What is Drupal Licensing?

Drupal and all contributed files hosted on _Drupal.org_ are licensed under the
GNU General Public License (GPL), version 2 or later. That means you are free to
download, reuse, modify, and distribute any files that are part of a project on
_Drupal.org_ under the terms of GPL version 2 or 3. You can also run the core
software in combination with any code with any license that is compatible with
version 2 or 3.

Drupal contributors should follow these guidelines:

* All files (PHP, JavaScript, images, Flash, etc.) that are part of a project
on _Drupal.org_ have to be under GPL version 2 or later.

* All Drupal contributors retain copyright on their code, but agree to release
it under the same license as Drupal.

* Drupal modules and themes are a derivative work of Drupal. If you distribute
them, you must do so under the terms of GPL version 2 or later.

* All content on _Drupal.org_ itself is copyrighted by its original
contributors, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
license 2.0.

* Sample code on _Drupal.org_ is also available under GPL version 2 or later.

==== Related topics

<<thoughts-connecting>>

==== Additional resources

* https://www.drupal.org/about/licensing[_Drupal.org_ page on "Licensing"]

* https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core!LICENSE.txt/8.2.x["Drupal 8 LICENSE.txt" page on _api.drupal.org_]

* http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html[GNU General Public License, version 2]

* http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html[GNU General Public License, version 3]

* https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/[Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 2.0.]

* https://groups.drupal.org/legal["Legal Group" on _groups.drupal.org_]


*Attributions*

Adapted by https://www.drupal.org/u/dianalakatos[Diána Lakatos] at
https://pronovix.com/[Pronovix] from
https://www.drupal.org/about/licensing["Licensing"]
copyright 2000-2017 by the individual contributors to the
https://www.drupal.org/documentation[Drupal Community Documentation].
