Cisco Cisco IPICS Release 2.1 Licensing Information

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 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.