[For assistance, please call: 1-800-272-7033]
169
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 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.
Summary of Contents for BL-WV10A
Page 179: ...179 Index...
Page 183: ...For assistance please call 1 800 272 7033 183...
