EN -30-
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public
License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change
free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This
General Public License applies to most of the Free Software
Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors
commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is
covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can
apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that
you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge
for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in
new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone
to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These
restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute
copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you
have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their
rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free
software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on,
we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original,
so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the
original authors' reputations.
