On 12/10/2019 3:10 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > KOLANICH <kolan_n@xxxxxxx> 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
