Appendix F
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that
forbid distributors to deny you these rights or to ask you
to surrender these rights. These restrictions translate to
certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of
the library or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of the library,
whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients
all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that
they, too, receive or can get the source code. If you link
other code with the library, you must provide complete
object files to the recipients, so that they can relink them
with the library after making changes to the library and
recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so
they know their rights.
We protect your rights with a two-step method: (1) we
copyright the library, and (2) we offer you this license,
which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/
or modify the library.
To protect each distributor, we want to make it very clear
that there is no warranty for the free library. Also, if the
library is modified by someone else and passed on, the
recipients should know that what they have is not the
original version, so that the original author's reputation
will not be affected by problems that might be introduced
by others.
Finally, software patents pose a constant threat to the
existence of any free program. We wish to make sure
that a company cannot effectively restrict the users of
a free program by obtaining a restrictive license from a
patent holder. Therefore, we insist that any patent license
obtained for a version of the library must be consistent
with the full freedom of use specified in this license.
Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered
by the ordinary GNU General Public License. This license,
the GNU Lesser General Public License, applies to certain
designated libraries, and is quite different from the
ordinary General Public License. We use this license for
certain libraries in order to permit linking those libraries
into non-free programs.
When a program is linked with a library, whether
statically or using a shared library, the combination of
the two is legally speaking a combined work, a derivative
of the original library. The ordinary General Public
License therefore permits such linking only if the entire
combination fits its criteria of freedom. The Lesser General
Public License permits more lax criteria for linking other
code with the library.
We call this license the "Lesser" General Public License
because it does Less to protect the user's freedom than
the ordinary General Public License. It also provides
other free software developers Less of an advantage over
competing non-free programs. These disadvantages are
the reason we use the ordinary General Public License
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for many libraries. However, the Lesser license provides
advantages in certain special circumstances.
For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special
need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain
library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve
this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library.
A more frequent case is that a free library does the same
job as widely used non-free libraries. In this case, there is
little to gain by limiting the free library to free software
only, so we use the Lesser General Public License.
In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-
free programs enables a greater number of people to use
a large body of free software. For example, permission to
use the GNU C Library in non-free programs enables many
more people to use the whole GNU operating system, as
well as its variant, the GNU/Linux operating system.
Although the Lesser General Public License is Less
protective of the users' freedom, it does ensure that the
user of a program that is linked with the Library has the
freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a
modified version of the Library.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution
and modification follow. Pay close attention to the
difference between a "work based on the library" and a
"work that uses the library". The former contains code
derived from the library, whereas the latter must be
combined with the library in order to run.
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION
AND MODIFICATION
0. This License Agreement applies to any software library
or other program which contains a notice placed by
the copyright holder or other authorized party saying
it may be distributed under the terms of this Lesser
General Public License (also called "this License"). Each
licensee is addressed as "you".
A "library" means a collection of software functions
and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked
with application programs (which use some of those
functions and data) to form executables.
The "Library", below, refers to any such software library
or work which has been distributed under these terms.
A "work based on the Library" means either the Library
or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to
say, a work containing the Library or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated
straightforwardly into another language. (Hereinafter,
translation is included without limitation in the term
"modification".)
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