Re: git to libgit2 code relicensing

From: Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date: Nov 15, 2008, 11:05 UTC
Message-ID: <491EACFA.9040604@op5.se>
In-Reply-To: <3af572ac0811150228k291b8850idc34cb474f455aa7@mail.gmail.com>

Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

>> 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.
> 
> Do you mean if I write a patch to libgit2, send it upstream and make
> it public on my website but it is not accepted upstream, I cannot link
> my modified libgit2 version (i. e. libgit2 + my patch) to my non-GPL
> software?

I think that's the case, yes.

> It looks insane to me: I wrote the patch and made it public
> but you guys did not accept it!
>

Well, if you wrote a patch that uses a closed-source database library to store git objects in, how would that benefit the community even if you published the patch?

You could ofcourse fork the library, but then you'd have to take care of namespace conflicts and such things. The fork would naturally have to be licensed GPL + gcc-exception too, since it's a derivative work.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
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