78 Appendix
Appendix
7
conditions; type `show c’ for details .
The hypothetical commands `show w’ and
`show c’ should show the appr opriate parts
of the General Public License. Of course,
the commands you use may be called
something other than `show w’ and `show
c’; they could even be mouse -clicks or menu
items--whatever suits your prog ram.
Y ou should also get your employer (if you
work as a programmer) or your school, if
any , to sign a “ cop yright disclaimer” for the
program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter
the names:
Y oyodyne, 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
Ty Coon, P resident of Vice
This General Public License does not permit
incorporating your program into proprietary
programs. If your prog ram is a subroutine
library, you may consider it more useful to
permit linking proprietar y applications with
the library. If this is what you want to do,
use the GNU Lesser General Public License
instead of this License.
GNU LESSER
GENERAL PUBLIC
LICENSE
Version 2.1, F ebruary 1999
Copyright (C) 1991, 1999 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, F ifth Floor , Boston, MA
02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute
verbatim copies of this license document,
but changing it is not allowed.
[ This is the rst released version of the Lesser
GPL. It also counts as the successor of the
GNU Library Public License, version 2, hence
the version number 2.1.]
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed
to take away your freedom to shar e and
change it. By contrast, the GNU General
Public Licenses are intended to guarant ee
your freedom to share and change fr ee
software--to make sure the soft ware is free
for all its users.
This license, the Lesser General P ublic
License, applies to some special ly designat ed
software packages--t ypically libraries--of
the Free Software F oundation and other
authors who decide to use it. Y ou can use it
too, but we suggest you rst think car efully
about whether this license or the ordinary
General Public License is the better strategy
to use in any particular case, based on the
explanations below.
When we speak of free software, we are
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T o protect your rights, we need t o make
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We prot ect your rights with a two-step
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We wish to make sure that a compan y
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Most GNU software, including some libraries,
is covered by the ordinary GNU General
Public License. This license, the GNU L esser
General Public License, applies to certain
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from the ordinary General Public License. We
use this license for certain libraries in order
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When a program is linked with a library,
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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 or dinary
General Public License. It also provides
other free software developers Less of
an advantage over competing non-free
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reason we use the ordinary General Public
License for many libraries. Howev er, the
Lesser license pr ovides 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 librar y, so that it
becomes a de-facto standard. T o achieve
this, non-free programs must be allo wed to
use the library. A more fr equent 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 L esser 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. F or example,
permission to use the GNU C Library in non-
free programs enables many mor e 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 modied version of the Library.
The precise terms and conditions for
copying, distribution and modication
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between a “work based on the library ” and
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contains code derived from the library,
whereas the latter must be combined with
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TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR
COP YING, DISTRIBUTION AND
MODIFICA TION
0. This License Agr eement 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 “y ou” .
A “ library” means a collectio n of softwar e
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The “Library” , below, r efers to any such
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containing the Library or a por tion of it,
either verbatim or with modications
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