Re: libgit2 - a true git library

["Scott Chacon" <schacon@gmail.com>]

> On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 3:57 PM, Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
>> Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 31 Oct 2008, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
>>>
>>> > My take on the consensus for the license part of the discussion is
>>> > that libgit2 should be under the "GPL gcc library" license.
>>> >
>>> > BTW, I can't actually find a copy of that license; the only thing
>>> > I can locate in the GCC SVN tree is a copy of the LGPL.
>>>
>>> The exception is usually found at the top of files constituting
>>> libgcc.a.  One example is gcc/config/arm/ieee754-df.S.  ;-)
>>
>> Headers updated.  Its now GPL+gcc library exception.
>>
>> Not that the 5 lines of useful code there really needs copyright,
>> but hey, whatever.

I guess my main concern is that if a company wanted to direct
resources at supporting Git in something (say, an editor or GUI or
whatnot), and that company is of _any_ size, they are going to have to
get their legal department to review this strange and almost totally
unused license - only knowing that it's barely different than GPL and
they know GPL will not fly.  LGPL will likely be known to them and a
policy may already be in place.

Think about trying to incorporate this into something proprietary,
Shawn - how much of a pain is it going to be to get that license
reviewed in Google?  However, LGPL I'm sure there is already a
reviewed policy.  Now, since that may be a pain, time that Shawn could
have been spending being paid to work on the library is lost because
they can't use it, or it takes weeks/months to review it.  That's my
concern.

I personally would rather see it BSD or something more permissive so
that no human has to waste even a second of their valuable time
figuring out if they can work with it or not, but I understand that
many people here are much more protective of their code.  I simply
think that LGPL is a much more widely used and understood compromise
that affords nearly the same protectionism.

Scott

>>
>> --
>> Shawn.
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>