Linksys E1000
Appendix E: Software End User License Agreement
51
Wireless-N Router
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 .
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
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
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A “library” means a collection of software functions
and/or data prepared so as to be conveniently linked
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complete source code means all the source code for
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Activities other than copying, distribution and
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of the Library in a tool for writing it) . Whether that is
true depends on what the Library does and what the
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1 . You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the
Library’s complete source code as you receive it, in
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You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring
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prominent notices stating that you changed the
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d . If a facility in the modified Library refers to a
function or a table of data to be supplied by an
application program that uses the facility, other
than as an argument passed when the facility is
invoked, then you must make a good faith effort
to ensure that, in the event an application does
not supply such function or table, the facility
still operates, and performs whatever part of its
purpose remains meaningful .
(For example, a function in a library to compute square
roots has a purpose that is entirely well-defined
independent of the application . Therefore, Subsection
2d requires that any application-supplied function or
