Table of Contents
Advertisement
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 execut-
able form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you accompany it with the complete correspond-
ing 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.
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.
6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine 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 your 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:
a) 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.)
b) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (1) uses at
run time a copy of the library already present on the user's computer system, rather than copying library functions
into the executable, and (2) will operate properly with a modified version of the library, if the user installs one, as
long as the modified version is interface-compatible with the version that the work was made with.
c) Accompany the work with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give the same user the materials speci-
fied in Subsection 6a, above, for a charge no more than the cost of performing this distribution.
d) If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, offer equivalent access to
22
Advertisement
Table of Contents
