ZyXEL Communications ZyWALL 1050 User Manual page 564

ZyWALL 1050 User's Guide
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 other code 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.
We protect your rights with a two-step method: (1) we copyright the library, and (2) we offer
you this license, which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the
library.
To protect each distributor, we want to make it very clear that there is no warranty for the free
library. Also, if the library is modified by someone else and passed on, the recipients should
know that what they have is not the original version, so that the original author's reputation
will not be affected by problems that might be introduced by others.
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.
564 Appendix C Open Software Announcements