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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 packagestypically
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.
74
HINWEISE UND LIZENZEN FÜR DIE IN DIESEM PRODUKT VERWENDETE SOFTWARE
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
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