Correction: it's LGPL, with the linkage exception [Edit: I'm wrong. See silentbicycle's comment below]. That's a big difference. Most importantly, it removes any reason to complain about licensing other than dogma, FUD, or ignorance -- libgit2 may be linked into permissively-licensed code at will.

I tend to prefer permissively-licensed code, too, but there's a world of difference between viral licenses with and without linkage exceptions.

Correction to your correction: It isn't LGPL, it's GPL v2, with an addendum adding a linking exception. They couldn't use the LGPL because it uses some code from git, but they apparently got permission to add a special exception for that code (but not a license change). They may rewrite that part, but it's not a high priority at the moment. This is a weird special case - IANAL, but it seems like a de facto LGPL.

I've been talking with Vincent Marti about this, because I'm considering writing a Lua wrapper for libgit2, but wary of relying on libraries under the GPL. (I'm fine with the LGPL.)

Also, I ported the library to OpenBSD - it needed some finagling with preprocessor directives for thread-local storage. Contact me if you're interested. It's a bit rough, just good enough to get started on the wrapper.

Guh, reading comprehension fail. Thanks for the correction.

IANAL either, but I agree that GPL-with-linkage-exception is functionally equivalent to LGPL, so I still think the rest of my comment's correct.

Of course, given my track record in this thread, I'd recommend folks double-check my work :)

No worries. It's a weird pseudo-LGPL situation. I hope I didn't sound like a smug asshole. I thought the same thing and double-checked, that's all.

Hey, I am interested. Why didn't you send us a pull request? If it's rough, we'll iron it out!

Planning on it. I was going to clean it up before I messaged you, currently it's "I use OpenBSD, want to play with this library, and know BSD Make like the back of my eyelids" only.

I said I'd keep you posted. By then, I'll probably have more news than just "I got it to build!", that's nothing.

When you say "may be linked into permissively-licensed code" what code are you excluding? I think libgit2 can be linked into any code, permissively-licensed or otherwise.

https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2/blob/master/COPYING

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that libgit2 couldn't be linked into non-permissively-licensed-code, too (you're right, and it can be linked into any code). I meant to contrast it with GPL-licensed code, which (might) requires re-licensing upon linking (maybe).

It's GPL with a linking exception. That's a pretty big exception, since it means you can use it in proprietary projects.

GPLv2 w/ linking exception > GPLv2 > GPLv3

Definitely a big step forward, and the API is pretty clean.