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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 Library General Public
License, applies to some specially designated Free Software Foundation software, and to any other
libraries whose authors decide to use it. You can use it for your libraries, 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 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 a program 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.
Our method of protecting your rights has two steps: (1) copyright the library, and (2) offer you this
license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the library
Also, for each distributor's protection, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no
warranty for this free library. If the library is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its
recipients to know that what they have is not the original version, so that any problems introduced by
others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that
companies distributing free software will individually obtain patent licenses, thus in effect transforming
the program into proprietary software. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be
licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered by the ordinary GNU General Public License,
which was designed for utility programs. This license, the GNU Library General Public License, applies
to certain designated libraries. This license is quite different from the ordinary one; be sure to read it in
full, and don't assume that anything in it is the same as in the ordinary license.
The reason we have a separate public license for some libraries is that they blur the distinction we usually
make between modifying or adding to a program and simply using it. Linking a program with a library,
without changing the library, is in some sense simply using the library, and is analogous to running a
utility program or application program. However, in a textual and legal sense, the linked executable is a
combined work, a derivative of the original library, and the ordinary General Public License treats it as
such.
Because of this blurred distinction, using the ordinary General Public License for libraries did not
effectively promote software sharing, because most developers did not use the libraries. We concluded
that weaker conditions might promote sharing better.
http://albatross.rose.hp.com/~lindsay/pdfs/german/warr_reg.htm (15 of 22) [6/21/2001 1:12:47 PM]
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