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Important Notice Concerning the Software
Y ou should hav e received a cop y of the GNU General Public License along with this
program; if not , write to the Free Softwar e Foundation, Inc., 51 F ranklin Street, F ifth
Floor , Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
Also add information on how to con tact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is int eractive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an
interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, C opyright (C) y ear name of author Gnomovision comes with
ABSOLUTEL Y NO W ARRANTY ; for details type `show w’ .
This is free softwar e, and you ar e welcome to redistribut e it under certain conditions;
type `show c’ for details.
The hypothetical commands `sho w w’ and `show c’ should show the appr opriate 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 y our program.
Y ou should also get your emplo yer (if you work as a pr ogrammer) or your school, if an y ,
to sign a “ c opyright disclaimer” for the pr ogram, if necessary. Her e is a sample; alter the
names:
Y oy odyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all c opyright interest in the pr ogram `Gnomovision ’
(which makes passes at compilers) writt en by James Hacker .
<signature of T y C oon>, 1 April 1989 T y Coon, Presiden t of V ice
This General Public Lic ense does not permit incorporating your pr ogram into proprietary
programs . If your program is a subr outine library, you ma y consider it more useful to
permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what y ou want to do , use
the GNU Lesser General P ublic License instead of this License.
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
V ersion 2.1, February 1999
Copyrigh t (C) 1991, 1999 Free Softwar e Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street , Fifth Floor , Boston, M A 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to c opy and distribute verbatim c opies of this license document,
but changing it is not allowed .
[This is the first released version of the L esser GPL. It also counts as the successor of the
GNU Library Public License, version 2, hence the v ersion 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 L esser General Public License, applies t o some specially designated
software packages--typically libraries--of the Free Software F oundation and other
authors who decide to use it. Y ou can use it t oo, but w e suggest you first think carefully
about whether this license or the ordinary General Public License is the better stra tegy to
use in any particular case, based on the explanations below .
When we speak of fr ee software, we ar e referring to freedom of use , not price. Our
General Public Licenses ar e designed to make sure tha t you have the fr eedom to
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T o prot ect your rights, we need to mak e restrictions that forbid distributors to den y you
these rights or to ask you t o surrender these rights. These r estrictions translate to certain
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For example , if you distribute copies of the library , whether gratis or for a fee, y ou must
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W e protect your rights with a two-step method: (1) we c opyright the library, and (2) w e
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T o prot ect each distributor , we want to mak e it very clear that there is no warran ty for the
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freedom of use specified in this license.
Most GNU software, including some libraries , is cover ed by the ordinary GNU General
Public License. This lic ense, the GNU Lesser General Public Lic ense, applies to certain
designated libraries , and is quite different fr om the ordinary General Public License. W e
use this license for certain libraries in order to permit linking those libraries int o non-free
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When a program is link ed with a library, whether statically or using a shar ed library, the
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library. The or dinary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the
entire combina tion fits its criteria of freedom. The Lesser Gener al Public License permits
more lax criteria for linking other code with
the library.
W e call this license the “L esser” General Public License because it does L ess to protect
the user’ s freedom than the or dinary General Public License. It also provides other
free software dev elopers Less of an advantage o ver competing non-free pr ograms.
These disadvantages ar e the reason we use the or dinar y General Public Lic ense for
many libraries. Ho wever , the L esser license provides advan tages in certain special
circumstances .
For example , on rare occasions, ther e may be a special need to encourage the widest
possible use of a certain librar y , so that it becomes a de-facto standard. T o achiev e this,
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In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a
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use the GNU C Library in non-free programs enables many mor e people to use the whole
GNU operating system, as w ell as its variant, the GNU/Linux opera ting system.
Although the Lesser General Public Lic ense is Less protective of the users ’ fr eedom, it does
ensure that the user of a pr ogram that is linked with the Library has the freedom and the
wherewithal to run that pr ogram using a modified version of the Library .
The precise t erms and conditions for copying, distribution and modifica tion follow . Pa y
close attention to the differ ence between a “w ork based on the library ” and a “w ork that
uses the library ” . The former c ontains code derived from the libr ar y , whereas the la tter
must be combined with the library in order to run.
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR C OPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICA TION
0. This License Agr eement applies to any software library or other program which
contains a notice placed by the c opyright holder or other authorized party saying it may
be distributed under the terms of this L esser General Public License (also called “this
License”). Each lic ensee is addressed as “you ” .
A “library” means a collection of software functions and/or data prepar ed so as to be
convenien tly linked with application progr ams (which use some of those functions and
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The “Libr ar y” , below , refers t o any such software library or work which has been
distributed under these terms. A “w ork based on the Library” means either the Library or
any derivativ e work under copyright la w: that is to say , a work c ontaining the Library or
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“Source code ” for a w ork means the preferred form of the work for making modifica tions
to it. F or a library, complet e source code means all the sourc e code for all modules it
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compilation and installation of the library .
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