Werbung
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 infor-
med 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, inclu-
ding 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
132
All manuals and user guides at all-guides.com
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, per-
mission 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 distribut-
ed 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 copyright law: that is to
say, a work containing the Library or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications
and/or translated straightforwardly into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is
included without limitation in the term „modification".) „Source code" for a work means the
preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For a library, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface
definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the library.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License;
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 absence of any warranty; and distribute a copy
of this License along with the Library. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transfer-
ring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Library or any portion of it, thus forming a
work based on the Library, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the
terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The modified work must itself be a software library.
b) You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices stating that you changed
the files and the date of any change.
c) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all third parties
under the terms of this License.
d) If a facility in the modified Library refers to a function or a table of data to be supplied
by an application program that uses the facility, other than as an argument passed when
the facility is invoked, then you must make a good faith effort to ensure that, in the event an
application does not supply such function or table, the facility still operates, and performs
whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful. (For example, a function in a library
to compute square roots has a purpose that is entirely well-defined independent of the
application. Therefore, Subsection 2d requires that any application-supplied function or
table used by this function must be optional: if the application does not supply it, the square
root function must still compute square roots.) These requirements apply to the modified
work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Library, and
can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this
License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate
works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Library, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose
permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every
part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or
contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right
to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Library. In addition,
mere aggregation of another work not based on the Library with the Library (or with a work
based on the Library) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the
other work under the scope of this License.
3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public License instead of
this License to a given copy of the Library. To do this, you must alter all the notices that
refer to this License, so that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License, version
2, instead of to this License. (If a newer version than version 2 of the ordinary GNU General
Public License has appeared, then you can specify that version instead if you wish.) Do not
make any other change in these notices. Once this change is made in a given copy, it is
irreversible for that copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all subse-
quent copies and derivative works made from that copy. This option is useful when you wish
to copy part of the code of the Library into a program that is not a library.
4. You may copy and distribute the Library (or a portion or derivative of it, under Section 2)
in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that
you accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which
must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily
used for software interchange. If distribution of object code is made by offering access to
copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from
the same place satisfies the requirement to distribute the source code, even though third
parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code.
5. A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is designed to
work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a „work that uses the
Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls
outside the scope of this License. However, linking a „work that uses the Library" with the
Library creates an executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains porti-
ons of the Library), rather than a „work that uses the library". The executable is therefore
covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables. When
a „work that uses the Library" uses material from a header file that is part of the Library,
the object code for the work may be a derivative work of the Library even though the source
code is not. Whether this is true is especially significant if the work can be linked without
the Library, or if the work is itself a library. The threshold for this to be true is not precisely
defined by law. If such an object file uses only numerical parameters, data structure
133
Werbung
