Section 2: Product Warranty
39
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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
modified version of the Library.
The precise terms and conditions for copying,
distribution and modification 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”.
A “library” means a collection of software functions and/
or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked with
application programs (which use some of those functions
and data) to form executables.
The “Library”, below, refers to any such software library
or work which has been distributed under these terms.
use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you are
informed that you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that
forbid distributors to deny you these rights or to ask you
to 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 files 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 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.
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2017-08-03 오전 8:16:09
