Filter
Top Products
APPENDIX
133
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.
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
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 hold-
er or other authorized party saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this Lesser General Public License (also
called “this license”). Each license 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 con-
tains, 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 restrict-
ed, and output from such a program is covered only if its con-
tents 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, pro-
vided 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 appli-
cation-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 dis-
tribution of the whole must be on the terms of this license,
whose permissions for other licenses 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 con-
test 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.