Filter
Top Products
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 fi les 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
modifi ed 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 specifi ed
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 fi ts 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 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 modifi ed
version of the Library.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modifi cation 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.
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”.