IRC Services Manual

Appendix C. Using Services code in other programs

IRC Services is distributed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (please read the license for the exact terms, of which this section is only a summary). Under this license, you may distribute Services either as-is or modified, either for free or for profit, with the following limitations:

You must make the source code to the entire program, including any modifications, available to anyone who asks for it.
You must distribute the program under the GNU General Public License; you may not change the licensing terms, except that you may elect to use a newer version of the license.
If you make any changes to any files included with the program, you must include a clear notice of your changes in each changed file. (Also note that under most countries' copyright laws, it is illegal to remove or alter copyright notices on copyrighted material, such as Services.)

This is particularly important to keep in mind for programs which use code from Services, which includes not only derivative programs distributed under a different name but any program that uses code from any part of Services. Under the GNU General Public License, if you use code from Services in another program and distribute the other program with the Services code in it, then the other program is considered a "derivative work" of Services and must be distributed under the terms above. If this is not acceptable to you, you have three options:

Do not use Services code at all.
Release the part of the program that uses Services code separately from the rest of your program (for example, as a run-time loadable module), if this is possible. In this case, the part of the program that uses Services code must be released under the GNU General Public License, but the remainder need not be. Note, however, that your program must function substantially the same whether the part with the Services code is present or not.
Contact the author directly and ask for permission to use the code under different terms. In this case, please state clearly what part of Services you want to use and what you are using it for, as well as the terms under which your software will be released and used. (I have in the past allowed small portions of the Services source code to be used under alternate terms.)

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