Re: [PATCH v3 03/16] reftable: add LICENSE

[Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@google.com>]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 12:45 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 01 2020, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 3:51 AM Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@google.com> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:21 PM Felipe Contreras
> >> <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 2:28 PM Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@google.com> wrote:
> >
> >> > Sounds to me Google has not made its mind about actually contributing
> >> > these changes.
> >> >
> >> > Or am I missing something?
> >>
> >> The restrictions are not about the patches themselves. They are about
> >> restricting what gets posted under github.com/google/ .
> >
> > I see.
> >
> > But it doesn't have to be posted on github.com/google/, it doesn't
> > have to be posted on github.com at all. If the code is under an open
> > source license, you (or anyone) can post it anywhere.

I am also bound by my employment contract to follow company
instructions. While you (Felipe) can post code where you want, the
same is not true for me.

> The libgit2.git and git.git codebases are under different
> licenses. Therefore if the goal is to have code that's used in both it's
> not viable to e.g. store it in git.git under our current contribution
> policies.
> [..]

Thanks for sketching the dilemmas here. Me and Jun are talking to the
open source folks here at Google, so I am optimistic that we will find
some solution. Please give us a few days to sort this out.

> The first contributor to submit a fix to it under GPLv2 as opposed to
> "any GPL or LGPL version" or whatever will preclude its subsequent
> import into libgit2.
>
> Assigning copyright to Google is a way around that. They own your work,
> and then they re-license it under whatever license those two projects
> use.
>
> But as I pointed out in [1] it requires contributors to git.git's
> reftable/ directory & Junio to play along with that scheme, least the
> whole process come to a halt. Maybe that's worth it, maybe not. But
> seems like something the series should very explicitly highlight and
> document e.g. in Documentation/SubmittingPatches.

FWIW, the plan of record is still for this code to have its source of
truth in the Git project. Once it's there, there is no need for Google
to have CLAs for contributions to the reftable/ directory.

There is still the open question of how to set the license terms for
this code, so it is OK for it to be copied into libgit2. I picked the
current license (BSD) because it was the most liberal I could find.
(Maybe I should document that in the commit message.)

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Han-Wen Nienhuys - Google Munich
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