Honeywell CN75 User Manual page 230

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.
Although the Lesser General Public License is Less protective of the users'
freedom, it does ensure that the user of a program that is linked with the
Library has the freedom and the wherewithal to run that program using a modified
version of the Library.
218 75 Series Mobile Computer User Guide