Appendix E Open Source Licences
NSA320 User’s Guide
448
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 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