Cisco WUSB54GS User's Guide download pdf (Page 34)

Appendix E

Software License Agreement

Wireless-G USB Network Adapter

GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2.1, February 1999

51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301,

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 Lesser GPL. It also

counts as the successor of the GNU Library Public License,

version 2, hence the version number 2.1.]

Preamble

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 Lesser General Public License, applies to

some specially designated software packages—typically

libraries—of the Free Software Foundation and other

authors who decide to use it. You can use it too, but we

suggest you first think carefully about whether this license

or the ordinary General Public License is the better strategy

to use in any particular case, based on the explanations

below.

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

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.

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 Library has the

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