Konica Minolta bizhub Pro C6500 User Manual page 23

1
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 de-
rivative 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 li-
brary. 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 en-
ables 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.
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 Li-
brary has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a mod-
ified version of the Library.
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
1-14
Introduction/ Safety Information
bizhub PRO C6500