we suggest you first think carefully about whether this license or the ordinary General Public License is the better strat- egy 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 soft- ware (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 surren- der these rights. These restrictions trans- late 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 mak- ing changes to the library and recompil- ing it. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with a
(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 war- ranty 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 repu- tation 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 pro- gram. We wish to make sure that a com- pany cannot effectively restrict the users of a free program by obtaining a restric-
tive 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
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 ordi- nary General Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire combination fits its criteria of freedom. The Lesser General Public License per- mits 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 ordi- nary General Public License. It also pro- vides other free software developers Less of an advantage over competing
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
In other cases, permission to use a par- ticular library in