Table of Contents
Advertisement
General Notes
5.
A program that contains no derivative of any portion of the Library, but is
designed to work with the Library by being compiled or linked with it, is called a
"work that uses the Library". Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of
the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License.
However, linking a "work that uses the Library" with the Library creates an
executable that is a derivative of the Library (because it contains portions of the
Library), rather than a "work that uses the library". The executable is therefore
covered by this License. Section 6 states terms for distribution of such executables.
When a "work that uses the Library" uses material from a header file that is part of
the Library, the object code for the work may be a derivative work of the Library
even though the source code is not. Whether this is true is especially significant if
the work can be linked without the Library, or if the work is itself a library. The
threshold for this to be true is not precisely defined by law.
If such an object file uses only numerical parameters, data structure layouts and
accessors, and small macros and small inline functions (ten lines or less in length),
then the use of the object file is unrestricted, regardless of whether it is legally a
derivative work. (Executables containing this object code plus portions of the
Library will still fall under Section 6.)
Otherwise, if the work is a derivative of the Library, you may distribute the object
code for the work under the terms of Section 6. Any executables containing that
work also fall under Section 6, whether or not they are linked directly with the
Library itself.
6.
As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that
uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the
Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the
terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse
engineering for debugging such modifications.
You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the Library is used
in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License. You must supply a
copy of this License. If the work during execution displays copyright notices, you
must include the copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a
reference directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do one of
these things:
a)
Accompany the work with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code for the Library including whatever changes were used in the work
(which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2 above); and, if the work is
an executable linked with the Library, with the complete machine-readable
"work that uses the Library", as object code and/or source code, so that the
user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a modified executable
containing the modified Library. (It is understood that the user who changes
the contents of definitions files in the Library will not necessarily be able to
recompile the application to use the modified definitions.)
b)
Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A
suitable mechanism is one that (1) uses at run time a copy of the library
already present on the user's computer system, rather than copying library
functions into the executable, and (2) will operate properly with a modified
version of the library, if the user installs one, as long as the modified version is
interface-compatible with the version that the work was made with.
c)
Accompany the work with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give
the same user the materials specified in Subsection 6a, above, for a charge no
more than the cost of performing this distribution.
d)
If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a
designated place, offer equivalent access to copy the above specified materials
from the same place.
e)
Verify that the user has already received a copy of these materials or that you
have already sent this user a copy.
For an executable, the required form of the "work that uses the Library" must
include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from
it. However, as a special exception, the materials to be distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the
major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which
the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
It may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other
proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system. Such a
contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library together in an
executable that you distribute.
7.
You may place library facilities that are a work based on the Library side-by-side in
a single library together with other library facilities not covered by this License,
and distribute such a combined library, provided that the separate distribution of
the work based on the Library and of the other library facilities is otherwise
permitted, and provided that you do these two things:
170
Hide quick links:
Advertisement
Chapters
Table of Contents
