hav e at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full
notice is found.
one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) yyyy name of author
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Gener al Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) an y later version.
This program is distr ibuted in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY W ARRANTY; without even the implied
warr anty of MERCHANT ABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
P ARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.
Y ou should ha ve received a cop y of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, wr ite to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Fr anklin Street, Fifth Floor , Boston,
MA 02110-1301, USA. Also add information on how to contact
you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is inter active, mak e it output a shor t notice like
this when it star ts in an inter active mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Cop yright (C) year name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTEL Y NO W ARRANTY;
for details type `show w'. This is free software, and y ou are
welcome to redistribute it under cer tain conditions; type `show
c' for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `sho w c' should
show the appropriate par ts of the Gener al Public License. Of
cour se, the commands y ou use may be called something other
than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks
or menu items--whatever suits y our program.
Y ou should also get y our employ er (if you w or k as a
programmer) or your school, if an y , to sign a "cop yright
disclaimer" for the program, if necessar y . Here is a sample; alter
the names:
Y o yodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the
program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers)
written by James Hacker .
signature of T y Coon, 1 April 1989
T y Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incor porating
your program into proprietar y programs. If y our program is a
subroutine librar y , y ou may consider it more useful to permit
linking proprietar y applications with the librar y . If this is what
you want to do , use the GNU Lesser General Public License
instead of this License.
If you are interested in obtaining GPL source code used in this
product, please contact Funai Electric Europe Sp. z o.o.
ul. Inůynier ska 1, 67-100, Nowa Sól / P oland.
LGPL
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
V ersion 2.1, Februar y 1999
Copyright (C) 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor , Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Ever yone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of
this license document, b ut changing it is not allow ed.
[This is the first released ver sion of the Lesser GPL. It also
counts as the successor of the GNU Librar y Public License,
version 2, hence the version number 2.1.]
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to tak e away y our
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU Gener al
Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to
share and change free software--to make sure the software is
free for all its users.
This license, the Lesser General Public License, applies to some
specially designated software packages--typically libraries--of the
Free Software Foundation and other author s who decide to
use it. Y ou can use it too, but we suggest you f irst think carefully
about whether this license or the ordinar y Gener al Public
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Most GNU software, including some librar ies, is covered by the
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When a progr am is linked with a librar y , whether statically
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The ordinar y Gener al Public License theref ore permits such
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The Lesser General Public License permits more lax cr iteria for
linking other code with the librar y .
W e call this license the "Lesser" General Public License because
it does Less to protect the user's freedom than the ordinar y
General Public License . It also provides other free software
developers Less of an advantage over competing non-free
programs. These disadvantages are the reason w e use the
ordinar y Gener al Public License f or many libraries. How ever ,
the Lesser license provides advantages in cer tain special
circumstances.
For example, on rare occasions, there ma y be a special need
to encourage the widest possible use of a cer tain libr ar y , so
that it becomes a de-facto standard. T o achieve this, non-free
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free librar ies. In this case , there is little to gain b y limiting the
free librar y to free software only , so w e use the Lesser General
Public License.
In other cases, permission to use a par ticular librar y in non-
free programs enables a greater number of people to use a
large body of free software . For example, per mission to use
the GNU C Librar y 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
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