[RFC/PATCH] Git doc: GPL2 does not apply to repo data

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Jan 31, 2016, 21:00 UTC
Message-ID: <1454274011-4880-1-git-send-email-philipoakley@iee.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1601280913450.2964@virtualbox>

Some potential commercial users may be put off by the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) that has been raised in the past regarding the use of FOSS software.

In such communities, even the legal advice may be misinformed and over-cautious regarding the storage of code and other intellectual property in a Git repository for fear that Git's GPL2 licence may somehow 'infect' the respository.

Add simple statements highlighting Git's licence, it's use for Linux, to imply industrial-strength, and that users should apply a suitable licence of their choice because the Git GPL licence does not apply to their repo data.

It should be noted that a 'git init' will create a repo that while empty of user data does provide the .git directory structure, which includes a number of template files ('hooks\pre-rebase.sample' is explicitly copyright), default refs and config file. Some may suggest that these carry the GPL2 to the repo.

The GPL2 will still apply to the hook templates and the other template files, but these, even if modified (becoming derived works) would be distributed with the repo, satisfying the GPL.

The new content copyright belongs to user. Request that they state their licence terms in line with recent FOSS industry practice.

Signed-off-by: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
---
asciidoc formatting not checked.

The fear of 'infection' of a repo by the templates copied to the repo by 'git init', should not be underestimated, given the need for the Bison exception. Sometimes it has to be spelt out why it's not an issue (in the commit messsage)

https://help.github.com/articles/open-source-licensing/

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/284715/
---
 Documentation/git.txt | 11 +++++++++++
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index bff6302..137c89c 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -1132,6 +1132,17 @@ of clones and fetches.
 	  - any external helpers are named by their protocol (e.g., use
 	    `hg` to allow the `git-remote-hg` helper)
 
+Licencing: Your data, and the Git tool[[Licencing]]
+---------------------------------------------------
+
+Git is an open source tool provided under GPL2.
+Git was designed to be, and is, the version control system
+for the Linux codebase.
+Your respository data created by Git is not subject to Git's GNU2
+licence, see GPL FAQs
+http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.html#TOCGPLOutput).
+
+User should apply a licence of their own choice to their repository data.
 
 Discussion[[Discussion]]
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