From: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@xxxxxxxxx>
Philip Oakley <philipoakley@xxxxxxx> writes:
diff --git a/Documentation/git.txt b/Documentation/git.txt
index bff6302..137c89c 100644
--- a/Documentation/git.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git.txt
@@ -1132,6 +1132,17 @@ of clones and fetches.
- any external helpers are named by their protocol (e.g., use
`hg` to allow the `git-remote-hg` helper)
+Licencing: Your data, and the Git tool[[Licencing]]
+---------------------------------------------------
+
+Git is an open source tool provided under GPL2.
+Git was designed to be, and is, the version control system
+for the Linux codebase.
+Your respository data created by Git is not subject to Git's GNU2
+licence, see GPL FAQs
+http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.html#TOCGPLOutput).
+
+User should apply a licence of their own choice to their repository
data.
Discussion[[Discussion]]
------------------------
While I know you mean well, and I do understand the sentiment behind
this addition,
It was an RFC for that very sentiment.
there are at least two reasons why I do not want to
(and why we should not) add any "clarification" or "interpretation"
like this.
One is because such a statement is pointless. Because we do not do
copyright assignment to the project, you are not the sole copyright
owner of Git. Individual contributors hold copyright to the part
they wrote. The above statement you made, even with an endorsement
by me as the project lead, does not have any power to assure that
the users will not get sued by one copyright holder, who is not you
or me, and at that point it is up to the court to interpret GPLv2.
We can call such a copyright holder crazy or call such a suit
frivolous, but that does not change the fact that the court is what
decides the matter, so having that statement does not help the user.
Another is because we are amateurs. Philip, you may or may not be a
lawyer yourself,
Correct, but as an Engineer I do get to review terms & conditions and
specifications quite often..
but I know you are not _our_ lawyer. An amateurish
"interpretation" or "clarification" does not necessarily clarify the
text but it muddies it, especially when done carelessly. Imagine a
case where a user creates a derived work of Git itself and stored it
in a Git repository.
"Your respository data created by Git is not
subject to Git's GNU2"--really? At least the phrasing must say that
the act of storing something in Git alone would not *MAKE* that
something governed under GPLv2.
I can see the potential double meaning now you highlight it - I was thinking
of the 'if it's _your_ data, you can choose'; however if it's not your data,
the originator's restrictions would apply - that wasn't said.
What the user puts in Git may
already be covered under GPLv2 for other reasons, and a statement
carelessly written like the above can be twisted to read as if we
are endorsing use of our code outside GPLv2 as long as they store it
in Git repository, which is not what you meant to say, but "that is
not what the copyright holder meant" is another thing the lawyer
need to argue in court to convince the judge, when we need to go
after a real copyright violator.
We should leave the lawyering to real lawyers and we should not add
unnecessary work of interpreting our amateurish loose statement to
our laywers.
Given Jonathan's question, and your earlier feedback, it did feel that a bit
of clear blue water would be useful between Git (the DVCS), and /.git/ (the
repo contents), even if it were only to clarify the issues...
Thanks.
--
Philip
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