Subject: Re: git to libgit2 code relicensing

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:17:48 +0100

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 14 Nov 2008, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>> The license decided for libgit2 is "GPL with gcc exception".
> 
> What's the exact language? 
> 
> I'm likely ok with GPLv2 + libgcc-like exception, but I'd like to see the 
> exact one. I haven't followed the discussions much..
> 

Shawn posted the exact text. The spirit of that license is that anyone can
use an unmodified version of the library for whatever they want, but it's
illegal to link non-GPL software to an altered version of the library. That
is, the git community will get all changes back while other projects can
use the official version of the library without having to worry about
licensing issues. EvilCompany cannot make changes to the library and then
link non-GPL'd software to their changed version. They can do that if they
send their library changes upstream and then only use them once they're
considered "official" though.

As the original author, you sort of have veto here since everything core-ish
is derived from what you wrote. Iow, if you say nay, libgit2 with a non-GPL
license will only fly if index, tree, commit, ref, etc... manipulation is
rewritten from scratch. That will be hard, given that it can fairly easily
be claimed that the people most likely to do it are so heavily influenced by
the current code that it's impossible for them not to make a derivative work.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
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