User's Manual
43
Appendices DSL-N10
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to
share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended
to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the
software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the
Free Software Foundation’s software and to any other program whose authors
commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered
by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your
programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, 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 or
use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny
you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate
to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you
modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a
fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure
that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these
terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you
this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the
software.
Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone
understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is
modied by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what
they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not
reect on the original authors’ reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to
avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent
licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it
clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modication follow.
Terms & conditions for copying, distribution, & modication
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of