From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
To: Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com>
Cc: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>, KOLANICH <kolan_n@mail.ru>,
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: Sun, 15 Dec 2019 03:29:11 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <86y2ve48zs.fsf@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <70575b23-6adb-a29b-8df8-f9099f86eb0e@gmail.com> (Derrick Stolee's message of "Tue, 10 Dec 2019 15:38:35 -0500")
Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com> writes:
> On 12/10/2019 3:10 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> KOLANICH <kolan_n@mail.ru> writes:
[...]
>>> ... 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.
Sidenote: I wonder if JGit, which is permissively-licensed (EDL,
i.e. new-style BSD) pure-Java implementation of Git, makes use of commit
graph.
I remember that pack bitmaps came to Git from JGit, where that feature
was first implemented.
Best,
--
Jakub Narębski
prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-12-15 2:29 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
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 [this message]
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=86y2ve48zs.fsf@gmail.com \
--to=jnareb@gmail.com \
--cc=dstolee@microsoft.com \
--cc=git@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=gitster@pobox.com \
--cc=kolan_n@mail.ru \
--cc=newren@gmail.com \
--cc=peff@peff.net \
--cc=stolee@gmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).