Re: gitoxide-compatible licensing of Git's Rust code, was Re: [PATCH 6/7] xdiff: conditionally use Rust's implementation of xxhash

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sep 25, 2025, 02:25 UTC
Message-ID: <20250925022555.GA3202669@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <bfaaf26f-5759-4812-9057-b3e0bf7c7949@gmail.com>

On Wed, Sep 24, 2025 at 02:48:26PM +0100, Phillip Wood wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Thanks for putting this so clearly, I agree with everything that you've
> written here. Another thing I'm concerned/confused about is how the
> exception for a single project works in practice. Does it mean that a third
> party that wants to re-use some code from GitOxide has to check if the code
> originally came from Git to determine which license it is under? Or does it
> mean that anyone who wants to use Git's code without the copyleft
> restrictions can do so if they launder it through GitOxide first? Neither of
> those seems like a great outcome.

If I understand the suggestion correctly, it's not to license it specifically to GitOxide. It's to use a permissive license (like GPL with linking exception) that would make it compatible with other projects with similar licenses (like GitOxide).

-Peff