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Appendix
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
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