On Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 01:45:08AM -0800, 'Sarah GOMEY' via Git for human beings wrote:
Disclaimer (which might get a bit more obvious later on): I (and anyone else on this mailing list) do not "represent Git" in any way; anything written below is my personal opinion. > Hope this email finds you well. > I'm a master student at ESSEC working on a research project on open source > and the business models built around it. We'd like to know more about Git: First thing first. Git is a piece of so-called free software [1], and as such, quite many things which are taken for granted when we discuss commercial software projects simply do not apply to Git. > How is it maintained? There exists an official "tree" (a regularly updated snapshot of the project) published using multiple venues including Github [2]. Most of the features there get integrated by the official maintainer - Junio Hamano [3], but other folks among the active developers have commit access to. Changes to Git gets discussed on a dedicated mailing list. Proposed code changes (patches and patch series) are supposed to be submitted directly to the mailing list as well, but there exist a helper Github-hosted tool to assist with drive-by contributions [4]. Anyone if free to submit patches, report bugs and propose features. Patches and propositions are discussed - again, by anyone, - on the mailing list. Code reviews are usually made by the set of core developers - basically those who are active on the project. Some, but not all, of these developers are actually working in different commercial entities making use of Git (including, but not limited to, Microsoft and Google). Also note that there exist an "official" (in the sense of "being blessed" as such) "continuous fork" of Git intended to make Git work on Windows; it's called Git for Windows, is maintained separately but has similar licensing terms to Git. Some Windows-related code gets integrated into the baseline Git from time to time, and GfW generally closely follows the Git's release schedule. Some of the GfW developers are also Git's core developers. > Do you generate any revenue or is it solely based on > donations through the Software Freedom Conservancy? I would say this point does not apply to Git as it is not a so-called "open-core" project in the spirit of MySQL/MariaDB or GitLab - where the code is mainly controlled by a commercial entity which gives "the core part" for free, but you can pay for extra features. Git is fully free in this sense, and as such I would posit it does not generate any revenue "for itself". It may generate revenue for its commercial users - such as via paid plans on Github, but there it's Github which is "receiving" that revenue. > Since GitHub is built on Git, does Git have an agreement with them? The Git's license does not oblige any entity which uses it to participate in any agreement. Note that F/OSS licensing is about protecting the code (and its users) - as opposed to protecting intellectual property of an entity owning the code. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software [2] https://github.com/git/git [3] https://gitster.livejournal.com/ [4] https://gitgitgadget.github.io/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Git for human beings" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to git-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/git-users/9b843fa2-de88-4207-9d67-7beb6af75093n%40googlegroups.com.
