On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 03:38:35PM -0500, Derrick Stolee wrote: > 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? It made it to me via the list, too. > > 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. That's my understanding as well. That said, I would not be opposed to some kind of statement in the documentation making our view explicit. -Peff
