Sony VGF-HS1 User Manual

Page 87

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VGF-HS1 3-98-360-11(1)

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 nonfree 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 freedom and the wherewithal to run that program

using a modified 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 from the library, whereas the latter must be combined with the library in order to

run.

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