Executive Summary

This is a guide to effective compliance with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and related licenses. Copyleft advocates usually seek to assist the community with GPL compliance cooperatively. This guide focuses on complying from the start, so that readers can learn to avoid enforcement actions entirely, or, at least, minimize the negative impact when enforcement actions occur. This guide introduces and explains basic legal concepts related to the GPL and its enforcement by copyright holders. It also outlines business practices and methods that lead to better GPL compliance. Finally, it recommends proper post-violation responses to the concerns of copyright holders.