Untitled Document
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
[This is the first released version of the library GPL. It is
numbered 2 because it goes with version 2 of the ordinary GPL.]
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to
share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public Licenses are intended
to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the
software is free for all its users.
This license, the Library General Public License, applies to some specially
designated Free Software Foundation software, and to any other libraries whose
authors decide to use it. You can use it for your libraries, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our
General Public Licenses are designed to make 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 or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can
do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to
deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the 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 a program
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.
Our method of protecting your rights has two steps: (1) copyright the
library, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to
copy, distribute and/or modify the library.
Also, for each distributor's protection, we want to make certain that
everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free library. If the
library is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to
know that what they have is not the original version, so that any problems
introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We
wish to avoid the danger that companies distributing free software will
individually obtain patent licenses, thus in effect transforming the program
into proprietary software. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered by the ordinary GNU
General Public License, which was designed for utility programs. This license,
the GNU Library General Public License, applies to certain designated libraries.
This license is quite different from the ordinary one; be sure to read it in
full, and don't assume that anything in it is the same as in the ordinary
license.
The reason we have a separate public license for some libraries is that they
blur the distinction we usually make between modifying or adding to a program
and simply using it. Linking a program with a library, without changing the
library, is in some sense simply using the library, and is analogous to running
a utility program or application program. However, in a textual and legal sense,
the linked executable is a combined work, a derivative of the original library,
and the ordinary General Public License treats it as such.
Because of this blurred distinction, using the ordinary General Public
License for libraries did not effectively promote software sharing, because most
developers did not use the libraries. We concluded that weaker conditions might
promote sharing better.
However, unrestricted linking of non-free programs would deprive the users of
those programs of all benefit from the free status of the libraries themselves.
This Library General Public License is intended to permit developers of non-free
programs to use free libraries, while preserving your freedom as a user of such
programs to change the free libraries that are incorporated in them. (We have
not seen how to achieve this as regards changes in header files, but we have
achieved it as regards changes in the actual functions of the Library.) The hope
is that this will lead to faster development of free libraries.
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, while the latter only works together with the library.
Note that it is possible for a library to be covered by the ordinary General
Public License rather than by this special one.
- This License Agreement applies to any software library which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder or other authorized party saying it may
be distributed under the terms of this Library 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.
- 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 distribute a copy of this License
along with the Library. 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.
- 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:
- The modified work must itself be a software library.
- You must cause the files modified to carry prominent notices stating
that you changed the files and the date of any change.
- You must cause the whole of the work to be licensed at no charge to all
third parties under the terms of this License.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. When a "work that uses the Library" uses
material from a header file that is part of the Library, the object code for
the work may be a derivative work of the Library even though the source code
is not. Whether this is true is especially significant if the work can be
linked without the Library, or if the work is itself a library. The threshold
for this to be true is not precisely defined by law. If such an object file
uses only numerical parameters, data structure layouts and accessors, and
small macros and small inline functions (ten lines or less in length), then
the use of the object file is unrestricted, regardless of whether it is
legally a derivative work. (Executables containing this object code plus
portions of the Library will still fall under Section 6.) Otherwise, if the
work is a derivative of the Library, you may distribute the object code for
the work under the terms of Section 6. Any executables containing that work
also fall under Section 6, whether or not they are linked directly with the
Library itself.
- As an exception to the Sections above, you may also compile or link a
"work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing
portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice,
provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own
use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications. You must give
prominent notice with each copy of the work that the Library is used in it and
that the Library and its use are covered by this License. You must supply a
copy of this License. If the work during execution displays copyright notices,
you must include the copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a
reference directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do
one of these things:
- Accompany the work with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code for the Library including whatever changes were used in the work
(which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2 above); and, if the work
is an executable linked with the Library, with the complete machine-readable
"work that uses the Library", as object code and/or source code, so that the
user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a modified executable
containing the modified Library. (It is understood that the user who changes
the contents of definitions files in the Library will not necessarily be
able to recompile the application to use the modified definitions.)
- Accompany the work with a written offer, valid for at least three years,
to give the same user the materials specified in Subsection 6a, above, for a
charge no more than the cost of performing this distribution.
- If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a
designated place, offer equivalent access to copy the above specified
materials from the same place.
- Verify that the user has already received a copy of these materials or
that you have already sent this user a copy.
For an executable, the
required form of the "work that uses the Library" must include any data and
utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it. However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that
is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major
components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the
executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. It
may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other
proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system.
Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library together
in an executable that you distribute.
- You may place library facilities that are a work based on the Library
side-by-side in a single library together with other library facilities not
covered by this License, and distribute such a combined library, provided that
the separate distribution of the work based on the Library and of the other
library facilities is otherwise permitted, and provided that you do these two
things:
- Accompany the combined library with a copy of the same work based on the
Library, uncombined with any other library facilities. This must be
distributed under the terms of the Sections above.
- Give prominent notice with the combined library of the fact that part of
it is a work based on the Library, and explaining where to find the
accompanying uncombined form of the same work.
- You may not copy, modify, sublicense, link with, or distribute the Library
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to
copy, modify, sublicense, link with, or distribute the Library is void, and
will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties
who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have
their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
- You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the
Library or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do
not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Library
(or any work based on the Library), you indicate your acceptance of this
License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing
or modifying the Library or works based on it.
- Each time you redistribute the Library (or any work based on the Library),
the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to
copy, distribute, link with or modify the Library subject to these terms and
conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients'
exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing
compliance by third parties to this License.
- If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise)
that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from
the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy
simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent
obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Library at all.
For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution
of the Library by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through
you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
refrain entirely from distribution of the Library. If any portion of this
section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance,
the balance of the section is intended to apply, and the section as a whole is
intended to apply in other circumstances. It is not the purpose of this
section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims
or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose
of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system which is
implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous
contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in
reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the
author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through
any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice. This section is
intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the
rest of this License.
- If the distribution and/or use of the Library is restricted in certain
countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original
copyright holder who places the Library under this License may add an explicit
geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that
distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In
such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body
of this License.
- The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of
the Library General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will
be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to
address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing
version number. If the Library specifies a version number of this License
which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following
the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Library does not specify a
license version number, you may choose any version ever published by the Free
Software Foundation.
- If you wish to incorporate parts of the Library into other free programs
whose distribution conditions are incompatible with these, write to the author
to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software
Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make
exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of
preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of
promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
- BECAUSE THE LIBRARY IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR
THE LIBRARY, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE
STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE
LIBRARY "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND
PERFORMANCE OF THE LIBRARY IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE LIBRARY PROVE DEFECTIVE,
YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
- IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL
ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE
THE LIBRARY AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY
GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE
OR INABILITY TO USE THE LIBRARY (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR
DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR
A FAILURE OF THE LIBRARY TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER SOFTWARE), EVEN IF SUCH
HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
If you develop a new library, and you want it to be of the greatest possible
use to the public, we recommend making it free software that everyone can
redistribute and change. You can do so by permitting redistribution under these
terms (or, alternatively, under the terms of the ordinary General Public
License).
To apply these terms, attach the following notices to the library. It is
safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the
"copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the library's name and an idea of what it does.
Copyright (C) year name of author
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
Library General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Cambridge,
MA 02139, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the library, if necessary.
Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in
the library `Frob' (a library for tweaking knobs) written
by James Random Hacker.
signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1990
Ty Coon, President of Vice
That's all there is to it!
This document was generated on 7 January 1998 using the texi2html translator version
1.51.