GNU, Free Software, and Copyleft

GNU, Free Software, and Copyleft

"The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had-that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted"
-Richard Stallman, MEME 2.04 http://oikos.org/ecology/freeinte.htm

In 1984, Richard Stallman started working on the GNU operating system. What made this system different was Stallman licensed it under the General Public License, which has also been referred to as Copyleft. This means it is an open or "free" operating system. Open seems like it would have been a better name for the system than free. The term free as it applies here means, "enables others to copy, distribute, and make changes to software, as long as they don’t prevent others from doing the same thing." What this means is you can still pay for the software and you are free to with it as you please as long as you adhere to "they don’t prevent others from doing the same thing."

GNU, Free Software, and Copyleft all seem to be intertwined and I feel like I’m talking in circles.

I guess the easiest way to explain it is by
1.GNU is an operating system that Richard Stallman made.
2.He licensed it under a General Public License or Copyleft which means:
"Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well." The key point in this is extended versions of the program must be free as well. This mean that some one can’t take the program and sell it without leaving it open to everyone else to make modifications.
http://Gnu.org is the best site I found explaining everything in detail also the MEME 2.04 link provides an in-depth interview with Richard Stallman which I found very interesting.