Table des Matières
Publicité
Droits de propriété intellectuelle et autres droits qui s'appliquent à ce logiciel
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.
GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR
COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. This 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.
The "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.
Activities 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. You 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 istribute a copy of this License
along with the Library.
48
F
You 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. You 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) The 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) You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all
third parties under the terms of this License.
d) If 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.)
These 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.
In 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. You 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.
Once 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.
This option is useful when you wish to copy part of the code of the Library into a
program that is not a library.
4. You may copy and distribute the Library (or a portion or derivative of it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you accompany it with the complete
corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed
under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used
for software interchange.
If distribution of object code is made by offering access to copy from a
designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from
the same place satisfies the requirement to distribute the source code, even
though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object
code.
5. A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is
designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called
a "work that uses the Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative
work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License.
However, linking a "work that uses the Library" with the Library creates an
executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains portions
of the Library), rather than a "work that uses the library". The executable is
therefore covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such
executables.
Publicité
Table des Matières
