Toshiba DB833 User Manual

Page 87

English

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 Gen-

eral Public License instead of this License.
LGPLv2.1

GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2.1, February 1999

tion, 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 ver-

sion 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 Soft-

ware 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 refer-

ring 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 restric-

tions that forbid distributors to deny you these

rights or to ask you to surrender these rights.

These restrictions translate to certain responsibil-

ities 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 pat-

ent holder. Therefore, we insist that any patent

license obtained for a version of the library must

be consistent with the full freedom of use speci-

fied 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 combina-

tion of the two is legally speaking a combined

work, a derivative of the original library. The or-

dinary 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 pro-

vides 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 pos-

sible use of a certain library, so that it becomes