ELEKTRON TECHNOLOGY MPS II Manuel page 92

92 MPS II Manual
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 mak e 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 mak e 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 mak e 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 mak ing changes to the library and
recompiling it. And you must show them these terms so they k now 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 mak e 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 k now
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
mak e 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 link ing those libraries into non-free programs.
When a program is link ed with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination
of the two is legally speak ing a combined work , a derivative of the original library. The ordinary
General Public License therefore permits such link ing only if the entire combination fits its criteria of
freedom. The Lesser General Public License permits more lax criteria for link ing 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 link ed 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".
© 2013 Elektron Technology UK Ltd.