/****************************************************************************/
/*	Copyright (c) 2009, Bendor Research Pty. Ltd. All rights reserved.		*/
/*	This software is released under the GNU General Public License, version	*/
/*	3, with the exemptions that 1) the header files installed by this 	 	*/
/*	package can be included in closed-source code and 2) the libraries		*/
/*	built by this package can be statically linked into a closed-source 	*/
/*	binary. See the file LICENSE for the details.							*/
/*	This software is provided "AS IS", without any warranty or guarantee.	*/
/*	By using this software you acknowledge that neither Bendor Research nor	*/
/*	any of its personnel or affiliates can be held liable for any damages,	*/
/*	including, but not limited to, loss of business, loss of money, loss of */
/*	life, loss or reputation, arising out of this software being faulty or	*/
/*	not performing as advertised, even if Bendor Research was aware of such	*/
/*	faults in the software. You use this software at your own risk, any and */
/*	all liabilities that arise out of your using this software are strictly	*/
/*	yours.																	*/
/****************************************************************************/

/**

@page license License

@section lrat Rationale

@subsection llic The GPL (General Public License) in plain English

If you are not familiar with the GPL, it basically says the following:
- There is no warranty or guarantee. You use the program at your own
risk. You waive all your rights to hold any author or distributor of the
program liable for any and all damages suffered by you or any third party
due to your using the program. If you can not or want not assure the legal
impunity of the authors and distributors of the program, then you
<b>must not</b> distribute or use the program.
- You can use the program for whatever purpose you want and install it
on as many of <i>your</i> computers as you want, with no restriction. The
license only covers <i>distribution</i> of the program or derived works,
not <i>usage</i>.
- You can read the source and modify it for your own needs.
- You can give away or sell the source of the program with or without
modification.
- However, if you give away or sell <i>binary</i> versions of the program, you
<b>must</b> also provide the source code.
- Furthermore, if you give away or sell the program <i>(and its source code
as per the previous point)</i>, either modified or original, you <b>must</b>
license it using the GPL, that is, under the same terms and conditions as
you got the program.
- If you release derived or modified works, you must clearly attribute all
original authors and clearly identify the bits of which you are the author.
- If you write a program that is mostly your creation but it <i>contains parts
of a program released under the GPL</i>, then it is a <i>derived
work</i> that you <b>must</b> release <i>in its entirety</i> under the GPL.
If you do not want to do that, then you <b>must not</b> incorporate
parts of a GPL-ed software in it.
- If you release a program under the GPL, then you <b>must</b> guarantee that
it is not encumbered by patents or if it contains patented technology, then
you <b>must</b> assure that that patent irrevocibly and perpetually grants
free use of the patented technology to everyone. If you can not guarantee
that, then you <b>must not</b> release the program under the GPL.
- GPL version 3 also states that you can not use the program to do DRM
(Digital Restriction Management by the FSF and Digital Rights Management by
the various "intellectual property" industry lobby groups).

@subsection perm Our stance

I personally believe that the whole "Intellectual Property" business is a big
scam. Copyrigts and patents are government granted monopolies. I find it
amusing that the greatest supporters of IP are companies who are the loudest
proponents of free markets, unfettered by evil government intervention or
regulation. Yet, they rely on the government to distort the free market and
create an artifical scarcity <i>for their benefit</i>. They spend literally
millions on lobbying the government that they despise so much to tighten
intellectual property legistlation further and further so that they get
more and more control over, essentially, human thoughts.<br>
Copyrights and patents have not been proven to further the arts or
technology but there are many cases where they can be shown to slow
down development in arts, science and technology alike. For a fairly thorough
analysis, you should read for example "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by
Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine; it is available as a book (for money)
and as a free PDF download. (Yes, legal download. For free. Yes.)
<br><br>
Regardless of my personal dislike of patents and copyrights, the current
legal framework recognises them, therefore one should respect them. The
GPL quite cleverly uses the very copyright law to achieve that the program
or any derivative work can not be monopolised: once released under the GPL,
it, and all of its derivatives remain under the GPL until the copyright
expires (and they become public domain) or the institution of copyright
gets abolished.
<br><br>
This library is intended for embedded systems, gizmos that have a
cheap but fairly powerful microcontroller in them, performing
some function that their users possibly never even connect with the idea
of a computer. Furthermore, the library gives you nothing special, the
functionality it provides is pretty basic. We certainly hope that it helps
you to write your application by having the basic building blocks in place,
but it is not the actual application that you create. Neither the GPL, nor
the LGPL (Lesser GPL) allows you to statically link a closed-source software
against a GPL (or LGPL) library. We felt that demanding you to release the
whole application just because you used functions from this library would be
rather impractical. Thus, we release the library under the GPL but we
grant you a few exemptions, that will allow you to use the library to
build closed source products. (We can do that, as we're the copyright
holders and we are free to release the library under any license we like.
Note, however, that you are a licensee therefore you can not change the
terms of the license, even if you give away our code to third parties.)
<br><br>
The aim of the exemptions is the following:
- They allow you to build a closed-source application that is statically
linked against this library.
- They allow you to modify the library to suit your needs, but in that case
you must release your changes to the library source. You are not requred to
release the source of your application, only that of the modified library.
- They do not allow you to incorporate the source code of the library in
your proprietary application. That is, you can use the <i>functionality</i>
of the library by linking against it, but you can not use the library's
<i>source code</i> in your closed projects. Naturally, as per the GPL,
if you write an open source application, you are free to take our source
and put it into yours but if your application is proprietary, then you
can't use our source code, only the binary libraries built from our source.
- You have to tell your users that you used this library, even if you do
not provide source for your application and the users have no means to change
the binary image in your embedded hardware.

@section License License

This software and its documentation is Copyright &copy;
Bendor Research Pty. Ltd.
<br><br>
It is licensed under the terms and conditions of the GNU
General Public License, version 3 with some extra clauses that grant
you rights that the GPL would normally not. The extra clauses can be
found below.
This license should be interpreted together with the GPL. This license
as well as the GPLv3 license should be included, without modification,
in any distributed copy (modified or verbatim) of this software.
@subsection lic_def Definitions

- The word <i><tt>Library</tt></i> refers to the collection of libraries
for embedded microcontrollers published by Bendor Research Pty. Ltd.

- The word <i><tt>Source</tt></i> refers to the source code of the Library.

- The expression <i><tt>Installed Libraries</tt></i> refers to the binary
libraries generated and installed by the Library's build and install process.

- The expression <i><tt>Header Files</tt></i> refers to the C header files
installed by the build and install process of the Library. Even if a Header
File is a copy of a file in the Source, the Source and the Header File are
legally considered to be different entities.

- The word <i><tt>Modify</tt></i> means changing the Source, adding to it,
reorganising it, porting it to different environments, target architectures
or toolsets.

@subsection Licensing Terms

The Library is released under the terms and conditions of the Free
Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (hereinafter GPL),
version 3 or, at your discretion, any later version, with the
following exemptions from the terms of the GPL:

- You are allowed to include the Header Files in your closed source
package for the purpose of compiling it.

- You are allowed to build and distribute a statically linked binary
image that is linked against the Installed Libraries.

- You may Modify the Source and distribute a closed source
application that uses the Header Files and the Installed Libraries
generated from the Modified Source. However, the Modified Source
is derived work, which you must make available and license using
the terms and conditions of this license. This clause does not
affect the licensing terms of your own sources, only the
Modified version of the Library.

- The above exemptions do not mean that you can incorporate any
part of the Source of the Library in your closed source code.
You can not use files from the Library and compile them into
your project, you can not include files from the Source in your
files and you can not copy and paste (by any method) parts of
the Source into your closed source code.

- Even if you do not modify the library and do not release your
sources, you have to declare to the recipients of your closed
source code that you used the Library in your product and give
credit to Bendor Research as well as any authors who had contributed
to the Library.

- In every other aspect of Copyright, Patent, Trademark and
Anti-Circumvention Law, as well as Law related to liability,
the terms and conditions set forth by the GPL apply.

@section gpl GNU General Public License version 3.0

@htmlinclude "gpl-3.0-standalone.html"

*/

