SMT-H4372 User Guide_
27
ANNEX
program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary 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, February 1999
Copyright (C) 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth 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 first 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 share and change it. By contrast, the
GNU General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to
make sure the software is free for all its users.
This license, the Lesser General Public License, applies to some specially designated software packages--
typically libraries--of the Free Software Foundation and other authors who decide to use it. You can use it too,
but we suggest you first think carefully 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 referring to freedom of use, not price. Our General Public Licenses
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To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid distributors to deny you these rights or to ask you
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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.
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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
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When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two
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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.
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In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a greater number of people
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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
Summary of Contents for SMT-H4372
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