What is an Official Mirror

I have noticed that on some download pages at major geeks, there is a badge indicating that
major geeks is an Official Mirror.

Can someone explain what that is?

I haven't been able to find a definition.

 

Official mirror sites, as I understand it, are those that are authorized and supported by the original software authors for downloading. Which should mean you will have no issues with the software not working, and that you won't get any unexpected items included in your download.

Totally a layman's definition...I'm sure someone official has an actual explanation.

 

Simply put, a "Mirror" is a duplicate of a website with web server capabilities. Thus, each server can serve the same site. Mirroring is done to increase a site's bandwidth, thus performance. Mirroring is good on end user performance, though replication issues now become an issue. Can also be a 'safety' thing. If one site goes down, the other Mirrors are still running.

 

Simple: if you break an "official" mirror, you'll "officially" have 7 years of bad luck.

:major