Alternatives to Git?

Question

Is there any version control software with the functionality of Git, but which is not under a viral license? - A "viral license" being, by my definition, one which requires derived software to be under the same or an equally-restrictive license.

I'm not interested in an argument on or discussion about the GPL; it's outside the scope of this question and website.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The other options are:

1. Perforce
2. Bazaar
3. SVN
4. CVS

Answer 2

Fossil is (and Codeville was) a BSD-licensed distributed revision control system.

Note that unless you're actually modifying the version control software itself, the license doesn't affect you; you're free to develop non-GPL'ed software using a GPL'ed tool to manage revisions.

Answer 3

UPDATE:

Since 2 years passed since started professionally working with git (after 20 years of not-git...) I can say this:

1. GIT has it's advantages when it comes to merging code bases between branches and multiple users. Once you master it, and learn to ignore its - sometimes utterly confusing command line UI - can be easy to work with.

2. On the downside, GIT IS complex to understand and LEARN. There is a long steep learning phase, especially if you work from the command line in multiply branched repository (the common and the recommended approach). Working with UI tools like InteliJ IDE's can hide some of the details, but these require their learning attention and time too + some not so basic GIT knowledge. And this knowledge is required by ALL members of your team.

OLD AND (not so) BELOVED ANSWER:

Forget the license... You want to NOT use GIT for so many other reasons...

If you want things to work faster for your team - stay away from GIT. Why not use SVN? It is supported by any service that supports GIT, and is the most popular alternative to GIT (as far as I know).

To commit/merge/manage a team in GIT it'll take you exponentially more time than other SVN/Fossil/... All in the name of advance "distributed" design, and a rich set of methods to kill your code, merge it wrongly, give you so many options to do horrible mistakes (that happen to pro's and newbies alike), and do simple things the HARD HARD way. Were in reality it only serves the ritual hungry souls of geeky programmers, who would otherwise have to go home late and face the empty walls of their houses... (poetic answer too).

REALLY - It would actually be funny if it wasn't the number one pain-in-the-arse time killer in the office. And once you go GIT you can never go back, so my advice, don't let the geeks have it. Keep it out or pay the price.

And, yeah, I know the crowd here, and I am more than willing to loose a few points. It's not like it means anything real.