Cisco Cisco IPICS Release 2.1 Licensing Information

numbered 2 because it goes with version 2 of the ordinary GPL.]

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 Library General Public License, applies to some specially designated Free Software Foundation

software, and to any other libraries whose authors decide to use it. You can use it for your libraries, 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 software 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

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 a program

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.

 

Our method of protecting your rights has two steps: (1) copyright the library, and (2) offer you this license which

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

 

Also, for each distributor's protection, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty

for this free library. If the library is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that

what they have is not the original version, 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 companies

distributing free software will individually obtain patent licenses, thus in effect transforming the program into

proprietary software. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use

or not licensed at all.

 

Most GNU software, including some libraries, is covered by the ordinary GNU General Public License, which was

designed for utility programs. This license, the GNU Library General Public License, applies to certain designated

libraries. This license is quite different from the ordinary one; be sure to read it in full, and don't assume that

anything in it is the same as in the ordinary license.

 

The reason we have a separate public license for some libraries is that they blur the distinction we usually make

between modifying or adding to a program and simply using it. Linking a program with a library, without changing

the library, is in some sense simply using the library, and is analogous to running a utility program or application

program. However, in a textual and legal sense, the linked executable is a combined work, a derivative of the

original library, and the ordinary General Public License treats it as such.