Re: libgit2 - a true git library

[Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>]

On Sat, 1 Nov 2008, Pierre Habouzit wrote:

> See junio's example. It's rather easy to add hooks into the library to
> implement a feature outside of it. It's even possible to do it while
> preserving the ABI fully IMHO (by being a strict superset of it).
> 
> The patch would be so trivial, that I see no reason why they wouldn't
> provide it. Though the real implementation of the feature that would be
> delegated through it would be in their closed source stuff.

But at that point it's a matter of public perception.  It would clearly 
be against the spirit of the license even though the license itself 
couldn't prevent such tortuous practices.  Those people doing such 
things would clearly be identified as bad guys and get bad press, and 
libgit contributors could even attempt law suits based on the derived 
work angle.  That might be just enough to prevent such things to happen.

OTOH they would certainly come out clean if the license was BSD since 
the spirit of that license explicitly allows closing up the whole 
library and adding extra features.


Nicolas