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The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the
appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the
commands you use may be called something other than ‘show w’ and
‘show c’; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever
suits your program.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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. A “work based on the
Library” means either the Library or any derivative work under