Unofficial GNU GPL v2.0 Translations

Information about unofficial translations

The reason the FSF does not approve these translations as officially valid is that checking them would be difficult and expensive (needing the help of bilingual lawyers in other countries). Even worse, if an error did slip through, the results could be disastrous for the whole free software community. As long as the translations are unofficial, they can't do any harm.

The purpose of linking to translations is to help more people understand the GPL. In order for them to do that, translations need to be basically accurate even if not perfect. To produce a good translation, it is essential to have fully understood fundamental concepts such as copyleft and the free software definition. For this reason, those who wish to contribute translations should make sure they are well acquainted with these concepts as well as other philosophical principles that may appear in the document.

We give permission to publish translations of the GNU GPL into other languages, provided that:

  1. You label your translation as unofficial to inform people that they do not count legally as substitutes for the authentic version (see below for how to do this).
  2. You agree to install changes at our request, if we learn from other friends of GNU that changes are necessary to make the translation clearer.
  3. The translation is not hosted on a commercial site and does not refer to any company.
  4. The page containing the translation should have no links except to fsf.org and gnu.org. We might accept links about other free software packages, but we prefer to avoid them.
  5. You permit others to copy, modify, and republish your translation (and modified versions of your translation) subject to these terms by placing the following notice: “You may publish this translation, modified or unmodified, only under the terms at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/translations.html.”

We may accept small exceptions to these rules in legacy cases that are hard to fix.

We do not necessarily link to all the unofficial translations that we know of in any given language. For instance, if one unofficial translation was made by a free software organization that we know and have confidence in, we will link to that translation rather than others. We still can't make it official, but we expect it is probably mostly correct.

To label your translations as unofficial we want you to add the following text at the beginning, both in English and in the language of the translation—replacing “language” with the name of that language:

This is an unofficial translation of the GNU General Public License into language. It was not published by the Free Software Foundation, and does not legally state the distribution terms for software that uses the GNU GPL—only the original English text of the GNU GPL does that. However, we hope that this translation will help language speakers understand the GNU GPL better.

If you make a translation, please inform the GNU Translation Managers <[email protected]>. They will check to make sure that your translation follows the above guidelines and make a link to it from this page.

These are translations of an older version of the GNU GPL. Translations of current licenses can be found here.