Re: Can I use CRoaring library in Git?

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 16, 2022, 14:16 UTC
Message-ID: <220716.86y1wtxhok.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAPOJW5x4McofC5fxBvsRAzum28wmeDJCMTMRmY_0oy=32JjKqQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Jul 16 2022, Abhradeep Chakraborty wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Hello,
>
> I need the CRoaring[1] library to use roaring bitmaps. But it has
> Apache license v2 which is not compatible with GPLv2[2].
>
> Is there a way to use the CRoaring library in Git? Taylor told me that
> contrib/persistent-https tree is also licensed under Apache License
> version 2.
>
> [1] https://github.com/RoaringBitmap/CRoaring
> [2] https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html

As a replacement for git's own bitmap implementation?

It's one thing to have differently licensed code in-tree that's built as a separate utility (like that persistent-https tool), but another if this is going to be something linked to git itself.

My understanding is that such a thing could not be legally distributed as a binary (e.g. by Debian et al), so the users will be limited to those willing to build the two pieces from scratch locally, i.e. similar to ZFS on Linux (which I think is still the state of that ...).

But I'm not a lawyer and all that.

Another possibility is to get the library to dual-license itself, running "git shortlog -sn" on it it seems it's mainly written by one contributor, with a relatively short tail of others, perhaps they'd be willing to dual-license at the prospect of having git use it?