From: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>, KOLANICH <kolan_n@mail.ru>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, Derrick Stolee <dstolee@microsoft.com>,
Jeff King <peff@peff.net>, Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Could /Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt be relicensed under a permissive license?
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2019 15:38:35 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <70575b23-6adb-a29b-8df8-f9099f86eb0e@gmail.com> (raw)
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
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-12-10 20:38 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-12-10 19:31 Could /Documentation/technical/commit-graph.txt be relicensed under a permissive license? KOLANICH
2019-12-10 20:10 ` Junio C Hamano
2019-12-10 20:38 ` Derrick Stolee [this message]
2019-12-10 20:50 ` Jeff King
2019-12-10 17:18 ` Ed Maste
2019-12-10 20:58 ` Derrick Stolee
2019-12-10 22:20 ` Junio C Hamano
2019-12-11 0:36 ` KOLANICH
2019-12-11 12:57 ` Johannes Schindelin
2019-12-13 0:58 ` brian m. carlson
2019-12-15 2:29 ` Jakub Narebski
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