User's Manual

Dec 12, 2013 11:34 AM

License Text :

Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 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. 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,