Tabla de contenido
Publicidad
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.
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. T his License Agreement applies to any software library or other
program which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder
or other authorized party saying it may be distributed under
the terms of this Lesser General Public License (also called "this
License"). Each licensee 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.
T he "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 contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control
compilation and installation of the library.
A ctivities 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 restricted, and output
from such a program is covered only if its contents 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. Y ou may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Library's
complete source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided
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.
Y ou 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. Y ou 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) T he 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) Y ou must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no
charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
d) I f 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 application-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.)
T hese 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 distribution of the whole
must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other
licensees 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 contest
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.
I n 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.
3. Y ou may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General
Public License instead of this License to a given copy of the
Library. To do this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this
License, so that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public
License, version 2, instead of to this License. (If a newer version
than version 2 of the ordinary GNU General Public License has
appeared, then you can specify that version instead if you wish.)
Do not make any other change in these notices.
O nce this change is made in a given copy, it is irreversible for that
copy, so the ordinary GNU General Public License applies to all
subsequent copies and derivative works made from that copy.
T his option is useful when you wish to copy part of the code of
the Library into a program that is not a library.
iv
Publicidad
Tabla de contenido
