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<sect1>

    <title>Preamble</title>

    <para>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 software&ndash;to make sure the software is free for
    all its users.  This General 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 programs, too.</para>

    <para>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 service 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.</para>

    <para>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 distribute copies of the software,
    or if you modify it.</para>

    <para>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.</para>

    <para>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.</para>

    <para>Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make
    certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for
    this free software.  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.</para>

    <para>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 proprietary.  To prevent this, we have
    made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free
    use or not licensed at all.</para>

    <para>The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution
    and modification follow.</para> 

</sect1>