Licensing Information

Open Source Used In CDS-TV Recorder 3.6.1 1137
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.