Hirschmann RS2-16M Handbuch Seite 321

Anhang
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 pro-
grams 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.
RS2-16M
Release 9.0 09/04
Copyright integrierter Software
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