86
VGF-HS1 3-98-360-11(1)
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a
“copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision’ (which makes passes
at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into
proprietary programs. If your 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.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 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
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 and 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.
