ZyXEL Communications MWR222 - V1.0 Manual page 297

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom of use, 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 and use pieces of it in new free
programs; and that you are informed that you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
distributors to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender these
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
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.
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