17. interpretation of Sections 15 and 16.
If the disclaimer of warranty and limitation of liability provided above cannot
be given local legal effect according to their terms, reviewing courts shall
apply local law that most closely approximates an absolute waiver of all civil
liability in connection with the Program, unless a warranty or assumption of
liability accompanies a copy of the Program in return for a fee.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
how to Apply These Terms to your new
programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free
software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to
attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively state the
exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright”
line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program’s name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper
mail.
If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like
this when it starts in an interactive mode:
<program> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details
type `show w’.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain
conditions; type `show c’ for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w’ and `show c’ should show the
appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, your
program’s commands might be different; for a GUI interface, you would
use an “about box”.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or
school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if
necessary. For more information on this, and how to apply and follow the
GNU GPL, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
The GNU General Public License does not permit 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 General Public License instead of this License. But first, please
read <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html>.
gnu Lesser general public License
Version 2.1, February 1999
Copyright (C) 1991, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 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
version 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 Software
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 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 restrictions 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 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 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.
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.
