should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to
07
where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of
what it does.>
Copyright © <year> <name of author>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/
or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General
Public License along with this program; if not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street,
Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic
and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice
like this when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright © year name of
author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
for details type 'show w'. This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions;
type 'show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands 'show w' and 'show c' should
show the appropriate parts of the General Public License.
Of course, the commands you use may be called
something other than 'show w' and 'show c'; they could
even be mouse-clicks or menu items - whatever suits your
program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a
programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright
disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample;
alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in
the program 'Gnomovision' (which makes passes at
compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating
your program into proprietary programs. If your program is
a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to
permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If
this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General
Public License instead of this License.
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC
LICENSE
Version 2.1, February 1999
Copyright © 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim
copies of this license document, but changing it is not
allowed.
[This is the first released version of the Lesser GPL. It also
counts as the successor of the GNU Library Public License,
version 2, hence the version number 2.1.]
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 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.
52
Es
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, 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 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, permission 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 distributed 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 transferring
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 subsequent 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.