Copyright and License

Program Library HOWTO
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# 8. Copyright and License

This document is Copyright (C) 2000 David A. Wheeler. It is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL). You may redistribute it without cost. Interpret the document's source text as the ``program'' and adhere to the following terms:

> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

> This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

> You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

These terms do permit mirroring by other web sites, but please:

- make sure your mirrors automatically get upgrades from the master site,

- clearly show the location of the master site, http://www.dwheeler.com/program-library, with a hypertext link to the master site, and

- give me (David A. Wheeler) credit as the author.

The first two points primarily protect me from repeatedly hearing about obsolete bugs. I do not want to hear about bugs I fixed a year ago, just because you are not properly mirroring the document. By linking to the master site, users can check and see if your mirror is up-to-date. I'm sensitive to the problems of sites which have very strong security requirements and therefore cannot risk normal connections to the Internet; if that describes your situation, at least try to meet the other points and try to occasionally sneakernet updates into your environment.

By this license, you may modify the document, but you can't claim that what you didn't write is yours (i.e., plagiarism) nor can you pretend that a modified version is identical to the original work. Modifying the work does not transfer copyright of the entire work to you; this is not a ``public domain'' work in terms of copyright law. See the license for details, in particular noting that ``You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.'' If you have questions about what the license allows, please contact me. In most cases, it's better if you send your changes to the master integrator (currently David A. Wheeler), so that your changes will be integrated with everyone else's changes into the master copy.

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