Unpleasant but necessary lawyer-fodder: the material on this site is copyright by Eric S. Raymond. Except as granted below and explicitly by licenses on individual documents, all rights under U.S. copyright law and the Berne Convention (where applicable) are reserved.

I get a lot of letters from people asking if they can link to pages on my site, mirror them, do translations, etc. Here is my policy:

• You may link to any portion of this site that you wish.

• You may mirror any portion of this site that you wish.

• You may not make or redistribute static copies (whether print or online) without my express permission.

In general, I want lots of people to see my content, and if you want to help with that I'm happy to let you. However, I don't like having old, stale versions of my content floating around on other peoples' sites. These rules are mainly designed to try to ensure that when some third party sees my name on a document, the content reflects all my updates to it.

Therefore, I refuse requests from people who want to take one of my documents, modify it for a particular audience, and redistribute. Don't even bother asking, because I'll say no. Instead, write your document as a discussion of or comment on mine, and include a link to its home location or a locally mirrored version,

Translations are kind of a special case. Here are the rules:

• If you want to do a translation, go ahead, I give permission. I will carry a link to it when you send me a URL.

• I want you to host and maintain the translation, not me. I don't carry translations on my site, because when I do that they never get updated.

• Don't bother asking me if I know about translations to a particular language; if I know of one, it will be listed with the other translation links on the document.

• You must include a link to my original in a prominent place.

• You must conspicuously time-stamp your translation, so that if it falls behind the evolving English version readers will have some warning.