Re: libgit2 - a true git library

> david@lang.hm wrote:
>> On Fri, 31 Oct 2008, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
>>> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I.e. use the supplied custom function to do proprietary magic, such as
>>>> reading the object lazily from elsewhere over the network.  And we will
>>>> never get that magic bit back.
>>>
>>> Maybe I just think too highly of the other guy, but I'd hope that
>>> anyone patching libgit2 like above would try to avoid it, because
>>> they'd face merge issues in the future.
>>
>> the issue that I see is that libgit2 will be (on most systems) a shared
>> library.
>>
>> what's to stop someone from taking the libgit2 code, adding the magic
>> proprietary piece, and selling a new libgit2 library binary 'just replace
>> your existing shared library with this new one and all your git related
>> programs gain this feature'
>
> True.  The only thing that prevents that is the normal GPL. The
> LGPL and GPL+"gcc exception" allow this sort of mean behavior.
> I doubt there's enough of a market for that; replacing a library
> is something of a pain and if the feature really is interesting or
> useful someone will write a clean-room re-implementation and submit
> patches to do the same thing.