Gnu general public license – LevelOne FCS-5030 User Manual

Page 109

Advertising
background image

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

Version 2, June 1991

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but

changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it.

By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share

and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General

Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other

program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is

covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your

programs, too.

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, 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 soft-ware or use pieces of it in new free programs; and

that you know you can do these things.

To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights

or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for

you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.

For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must

give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or

can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license

which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone

understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by

someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the

original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors'

reputations.

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the

danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect

Advertising