From: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 20:38:35 GMT
Subject: Re: Could /Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt be relicensed under a permissive license?
Message-ID: <70575b23-6adb-a29b-8df8-f9099f86eb0e@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqimmoq6vw.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

On 12/10/2019 3:10 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> KOLANICH <kolan_n@mail.ru> writes:

I don't appear to have the original message? Perhaps it was
directly addressed to Junio?

>> ... the license of git itself is GPL, so I am not
>> allowed to use these 2 files to create an own permissive-licensed
>> tool reading this file. 
> 
> It is a wrong conclusion, isn't it?
> 
> GPL copyright protects the expression of the document, but the
> copyright protects only the expression, and does not protect the
> underlying format itself and the idea behind it.  So I do not see a
> need to relicense the documentation text at all.

(Insert "I am not a lawyer" warning.)

I think this is the correct interpretation. One can interact with
binary files as you want. In fact, there are likely privately
licensed products that interact with Git's pack-files even though
their format documentation is under GPL.

What _could_ be problematic is repeating the documentation directly
in another permissive-licensed repository.

Thanks,
-Stolee