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The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed to take away your
freedom to share and change the works. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is
intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to
make sure it remains free software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use
the GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to any other work
released this way by its authors. You can apply it to your programs, 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 them 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 prevent others from denying you these rights or asking
you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have certain responsibilities if you distribute
copies of the software, or if you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you
must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received. 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.
Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps:
(1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License giving you legal
permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it. For the developers' and authors'
protection, the GPL clearly explains that there is no warranty for this free software. For
both users' and authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as
changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to authors of previous
versions.
Some devices are designed to deny users access to install or run modified versions of the
software inside them, although the manufacturer can do so. This is fundamentally
incompatible with the aim of protecting users' freedom to change the software. The
systematic pattern of such abuse occurs in the area of products for individuals to use,
which is precisely where it is most unacceptable. Therefore, we have designed this version
of the GPL to prohibit the practice for those products. If such problems arise substantially
in other domains, we stand ready to extend this provision to those domains in future
versions of the GPL, as needed to protect the freedom of users.
Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents. States should not
allow patents to restrict development and use of software on general-purpose computers,
but in those that do, we wish to avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free
program could make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that
patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
ETERNUS CS800
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