English
_99
APPENDIX
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 fi rst 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 fi les 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 modifi ed 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 specifi ed
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 fi ts 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.
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
modifi ed version of the Library.
The precise terms and conditions for copying,
distribution and modifi cation follow. Pay close
attention to the difference between a “work
based on the library” and a “work that uses the
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