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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.