User's Manual
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dation and other authors who decide to use it. You can use it too, but we
suggest you 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 restric-
tions 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 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 oer 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 modied 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 aected
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 eectively 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 specied 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,