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PERLGPL(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLGPL(1)
NAME
perlgpl - the GNU General Public License, version 2
SYNOPSIS
You can refer to this document in Pod via "L"
Or you can see this document by entering "perldoc perlgpl"
DESCRIPTION
This is "The GNU General Public License, version 2". It's here so that
modules, programs, etc., that want to declare this as their distribu-
tion license, can link to it.
It is also one of the two licenses Perl allows itself to be redis-
tributed and/or modified; for the other one, the Perl Artistic License,
see the perlartistic.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom
to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is
intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free soft-
ware--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This Gen-
eral Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's
software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it.
(Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU
Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your pro-
grams, 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 ser-
vice 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 dis-
tribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis
or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you
have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source
code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
(2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy,
distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free soft-
ware. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, 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 redistributors of a free program will
individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program pro-
prietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must
be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modifi-
cation follow.
--
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in
the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of run-
ning the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is
covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program
(independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that
is true depends on what the Program does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source
code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously
and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice
and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to
this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other
recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Pro-
gram.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of
it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute
such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided
that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices
stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively
when run, you must cause it, when started running for such
interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a
notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide
a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under
these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this
License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but
does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on
the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
--
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifi-
able sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be
reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves,
then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when
you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the
same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program,
the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License,
whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and
thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest
your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to
exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collec-
tive works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program
with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a
storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the
scope of this License.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form with such
an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control
compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special
exception, the source code 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.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access
to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to
copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the
source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the
source along with the object code.
--
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program
except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise
to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will
automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, par-
ties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License
will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain
in full compliance.
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or
distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are pro-
hibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modi-
fying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program),
you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its
terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program
or works based on it.
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the
Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the orig-
inal licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to
these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restric-
tions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You
are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this
License.
7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent
infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues),
conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or
otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not
excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distrib-
ute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License
and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not
distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would
not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who
receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way
you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely
from distribution of the Program.
If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under
any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to
apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circum-
stances.
It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any
patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any
such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the
integrity of the free software distribution system, which is imple-
mented by public license practices. Many people have made generous
contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that
system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up
to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute
software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that
choice.
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to
be a consequence of the rest of this License.
--
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in cer-
tain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the
original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may
add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those
countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries
not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limita-
tion as if written in the body of this License.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions
of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions
will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in
detail to address new problems or concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the terms and condi-
tions either of that version or of any later version published by the
Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version
number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by
the Free Software Foundation.
10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the
author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the
Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we
sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the
two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free
software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
NO WARRANTY
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WAR-
RANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR
OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS
WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF
ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.
12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRIT-
ING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR
REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAM-
AGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAM-
AGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR
LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO
OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY
HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
--
Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these
terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to
attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey
the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the
"copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
Copyright (C) 19yy
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper
mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type "show w".
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type "show c" for details.
The hypothetical commands "show w" and "show c" should show the appro-
priate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands
you use may be called something other than "show w" and "show c"; they
could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your
school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if
necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
"Gnomovision" (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program
into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library,
you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applica-
tions with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU
Library General Public License instead of this License.
[End.]
perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLGPL(1)
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