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bined work, a derivative of the original library. The ordinary General
Public License therefore permits such linking only if the entire com-
bination 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 disad-
vantages 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 en-
courage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it beco-
mes 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, the-
re 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 pro-
grams 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 opera-
ting 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 mo-
dification 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.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODI-
FICATION
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