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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 packages--typically
libraries--of the Free Software Foundation
and other authors who decide to use it.You
can use it too, but we suggest you fi rst
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 fi les 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
modifi ed 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
specifi ed 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 fi ts its
criteria of freedom.
The Lesser General Public License permits
more lax criteria for linking other code with
the library.