[OT] What does 'General Public License' mean?

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

Hi,

 my apologies about the offtopic, but I hope someone on the list can
 help me with this.

 What does 'General Public License' mean?  Is it 'General' + 'Public
 License' or is it 'General Public' + 'License'? I think the name in
 English for those things is, respectively, Noun Phrase and Adjetive
 Phrase.  And whatever the correct one is, what does the whole thing
 mean?  Does the phrase as a whole have a specific legal or commonly
 accepted meaning?

 TIA,


                              Marcelo