[schacon]

Well, there's lots of really interesting opinions here from a lot of armchair lawyers.

To clarify, my stance on this is that the reimplementation did not copy protected expressions (Jplag reports less than 1.8% max similarity between the codebases), it's done in good faith, and it's what's best for the broader Git ecosystem (assuming Grit even becomes usable, which it's currently not purported to be).

From a copyright standpoint, however, only the first argument there is relevant. Grit is an independently authored implementation of Git-compatible behavior, with negligible similarity to Git source code.

I think antirez summarized the situation quite well and I broadly agree with his position: https://antirez.com/news/162

I think that those in the community who know me and have worked with me in the Git and open source communities for the last 20 years know that my intentions are to contribute, share and foster innovation and learning. Many of the main authors of the Git source code are friends of mine and I have no intention to steal anything from anyone, only to make their great ideas more broadly useful.

[mplanchard]

Have you addressed anywhere why you chose not to keep the copyleft license? It burns a lot of goodwill to use an AI for what many people will see as copyright laundering, and git has done just fine with the GPL, so it doesn’t seem like a blocker for adoption. What do you get from stripping the copyleft?

[cmrdporcupine]

https://blog.gitbutler.com/series-a likely has a large part to play in it.

By which I mean, what do we imagine a16z thinks of the [L]GPL?

My brief experience in a startup exposed to them is that a16z seems willing to fund "infrastructure" projects more than most, but they did seem to have a ready set of answers on what "open source" means in that context.

(If someone can find me an a16z funded team that published copylefted code, I'll take this back.)

EDIT: Ok, i'll eat my hat, Gemini found me some counterexamples

  Element (Matrix): The company behind the decentralized Matrix communication protocol is on a16z's investment list. In late 2023, Element relicensed its core software (including the Synapse server and its clients) to AGPLv3.

  Uniswap Labs: A massive cornerstone of the a16z Crypto portfolio. They published the Uniswap V2 smart contracts under GPL-3.0 (though they later shifted to a Business Source License for V3 and V4).

  a16z Themselves: In an ironic twist, a16z's own crypto engineering team maintains a public GitHub repository (a16z/a16z-contracts — a library for Solidity contracts) that is literally licensed under AGPL-3.0.

[Arathorn]

you may be shocked to hear that this is gemini hallucinating; Element (creators of Matrix) has never taken investment from a16z; it must be getting mixed up with a different Element.

[cmrdporcupine]

Oof, thanks for the correction.

Many bothans were boiled alive to get me this misinformation.

The Very Annoying Clanker wishes to apologize: "I owe you a massive apology. I completely set you up for that, and you handled the fallout perfectly.

Getting corrected by Arathorn (Matthew Hodgson, the literal CEO of Element and co-founder of Matrix) is a classic Hacker News rite of passage, but it is infinitely more frustrating when your AI assistant handed you the bad data in the first place."

Many eyerolls.

[keybored]

err my gud a ceo on haxer news.

[dayjaby]

Hey AI, please change my stolen code in a non-breaking way so that jplag reports less than 1,8% similarity.

[Pet_Ant]

I mean ”hey artist, take this stolen character and make them legally distinct” is already a common thing.

[xorcist]

It also mostly doesn't work, and even if it does work it's terribly expensive and time consuming enough to scare people off.

Go on, make a derivative of Mickey Mouse and sell it. See how it goes. Similar enough to be "compatible" (whatever that would mean in the animated cartoon space) but distinct enough not to run afoul of Disney lawyers. Then come back and tell us.

[Pet_Ant]

Mickey Mouse was already a legally distinct Oswald the Rabbit.

[saidnooneever]

there are event exact measurements to take into account, for visual art, music etc. 'what is legally not stealing'.

Art, however, is a little different than code. code is a thing, but it also produces things.

It weirds me out there is a measure of code similarity but not a measure of if code is semantically the same. for example implementing a protocol could be done in many ways, but ultimately whats talked between clients/servers on the network is the same. so it's semantically the same despite being totally different code.

[ssddanbrown]

> Many of the main authors of the Git source code are friends of mine and I have no intention to steal anything from anyone, only to make their great ideas more broadly useful.

By working-around/subverting the terms they provided their contributions under? While you claim to be doing this in good faith, and state "it's what's best for the broader Git ecosystem", that's all based on your own opinion which appears to ignore the benefits and intent of licenses such as the GPL.

Out of interest, Would you be happy for someone to do the same with the GitButler source code? (Feed it through an LLM and re-publish the result under an MIT license with different branding)

[schacon]

> Would you be happy for someone to do the same with the GitButler source code?

Honestly, that would be pretty awesome. We would be flattered.

[cmrdporcupine]

My question here is not whether it's legally permissible. I'll leave that to others.

It's WTF is wrong with this next generation of devs ? ... that they have such a problem with the GPL that they think it's important to rewrite and relicense and take away a legal structure which is supposed to protect our free software?

I can imagine some concerns with Git being written in C.

I cannot understand any legitimate concerns with its license that it needs to change.

What does the GPL stop people doing with git? And if there are some... why are people trying to do that? And why would you work for free to help people do it? [Edit: I see, you're not working for free.]

Missing an 'f' in the project name.

[bryanlarsen]

The original git had a command line interface. It's widely assumed that using a GPL'd program in your program through the command line does not cause the GPL to "infect" your program.

OTOH, one of the major reasons for grit is to provide a library interface. If they kept it GPL, anything that used grit through the library interface would have to also become GPL.

This could be the "legitimate concern" you're asking for.

But the LGPL was also an option -- it addresses that arguably legitimate concern and keeps the spirit of the original license.

[cmrdporcupine]

I mean, yes, clearly, LGPL is the explicitly obvious answer here. And they rejected it.

[schacon]

Relicensing under any other license, including the LGPL, is exactly the same thing. Either the reimplementation copies protected expression, in which case it would be required to be GPL-2.0-only, or it does not, in which case we can choose the most fitting license.

If you believe that using an MIT license is not correct, then you defacto also believe that using an LGPL license is not correct.

[wwallrust]

> Relicensing under any other license, including the LGPL, is exactly the same thing. Either the reimplementation copies protected expression, in which case it would be required to be GPL-2.0-only, or it does not, in which case we can choose the most fitting license.

Using LGPL could help the argument that the project was in good faith, making it more likely to be accepted as non-derivative. Its arguable that the relicinsing would be required to make the project work as a library and so LGPL would be the best choice since that (I assume) preserves most of the terms and intention of the original license. This makes it much easier to show that the license was changed solely to allow other projects to use it as a library.

By using the MIT license its much easier to argue that the project is in bad faith (and potentially derivative), since the license change can be seen as a deliberate choice to remove the protections of the original license. Its harder to argue that the license change was only so the project can be used a library because then you would have used LGPL instead.

(BTW im not a lawyer)

[bryanlarsen]

The OP you're referring to made a distinction between legally and morally correct. Legally, you appear superficially correct, but I'm not a lawyer, and neither was the OP. Morally, the LGPL is correct.

Judges are human and will take into account good faith and attempts to maintain the spirit of the license. Choosing the LGPL signals a desire to maintain the spirit of the license. The MIT signals bad faith. Judges don't like that.

[johnisgood]

GPL makes sure that the code remains open. Seems like these new gen devs are against open source.

[cmrdporcupine]

It pisses me off because I'm also the author of a rewrite-in-Rust project (though it's more than that, and yes I now use agents though I didn't at the start) and I specifically chose [A|L]GPL for it to protect the IP of the asset and because it felt like the most ethical choice.

[johnisgood]

I removed it but I added that I hate these people. :P So yeah, it pisses me off, too.

[cmrdporcupine]

"Don't hate the player, hate the game" as they say.

People want to get paid. They perceive the GPL as getting in their way.

Or, as it is also said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

[thewebguyd]

s/open source/free software

They love open source when it means they can steal from the public and then privatize it later with their VC funded startup, much in the same way Microsoft "loves" Linux [when you run it on Azure, or in WSL]

What they are against is free/libre software that prevents their grifting.

[johnisgood]

Yeah, pretty much. :)

[GoblinSlayer]

Is there a point in license laundering? Where GPL stifles git adoption?

[conartist6]

You know I think if you'd just committed to clean rooming it you'd be fine, but you didn't.

Now you're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: if the AI did no creative work, then you're definitely in violation of the original GPL license.

If the AI did do creative work that breaks GPL, you still didn't, which leaves you with the problem that you cannot in good faith license a thing which you don't own. No creative work? No ownership claim. There's precious little (if any) of your creativity in copy pasting 4000 tests and a link to the original source code and saying "copy this in Rust".

The flagrant display of cynicism you make in arguing that the ends justify the means (even if a result is the wholesale looting of open source) disgusts me, and if I could communicate to you only one thing it should be that you should not be surprised that other people are also disgusted by behavior like that even when it falls within the letter of the law (a claim I have not yet seen you rigorously defend).

[cmrdporcupine]

Man, all they had to do was LGPL it and there'd be no ill will.

[keybored]

Are you a trained lawyer? Okay but presumably not practicing in the last twenty years.

You know that all contributions to the Git project has to be signed off as either being made by yourself or being handed over by someone who has signed off on that certficate of origin. For everyone on every change. Even the lead developers so to speak. And you spend some thousands of dollars and run an AI analyis tool to wash your hands?

Who are you to do that? Oh wait I forgot, you are Mr. Chacon. A hand in everything Git and friendly with everyone in Git who matters for twenty years. Remind us next time as well so I don’t forget.