Third Party Copyrights and License Terms
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 specifi ed 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
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When a program is linked with a library, whether statically or using a shared library, the combination of the two is legally
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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
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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,
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In other cases, permission to use a particular library in non-free programs enables a greater number of people to use
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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 modifi ed version
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TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
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This License Agreement applies to any software library or other program which contains a notice placed by the
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You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Library's complete source code as you receive it, in any medi-
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