Owner's Manual

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.
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
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on the Library” means either the Library or any
derivative work under copyright law: that is to
say, a work containing the Library or a portion
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or translated straightforwardly into another
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“Source code” for a work means the preferred
form of the work for making modifications to
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all the source code for all modules it contains,
plus any associated interface definition files,
plus the scripts used to control compilation and
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Activities other than copying, distribution and
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they are outside its scope. The act of running a
program using the Library is not restricted, and
output from such a program is covered only
if its contents constitute a work based on the
Library (independent of the use of the Library
in a tool for writing it). Whether that is true
depends on what the Library does and what the
program that uses the Library does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies
of the Library’s complete source code as you
receive it, in any medium, provided that you
conspicuously and appropriately publish on
each copy an appropriate copyright notice
and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the
notices that refer to this License and to the
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You may charge a fee for the physical act of
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OPEN SOURCE LICENSE