I am not aware of any common "open source" license that requires distribution of comprehensive source code revision history or version-control information. A n

I am not aware of any common "open source" license that requires distribution of comprehensive source code revision history or version-control information. A number of licenses, including the GPLs, require those who make changes to licensed software to note that changes have been made when distributing their changes to others. A few also require distribution of changed versions in the form of the original or "official" distribution plus patch files. Have a look at the Artistic Licenses from the Perl community. And note that "permissive" (non-copyleft) licenses don't require sharing source at all. Nonetheless, some licenses assume that development-related information will be available, required or not, for the purpose of other license provisions. For example, Apache 2.0 determines which patents get licensed based on who is contributing code that implicates a patent, alone or in combination with the state of the project prior to their offer of a new contribution Even with comprehensive revision-control and licensing information, it's not always practical to determine whether a patent is covered. The Apache Foundation systematically compiles and archives contribution-related information, by institutional policy. Other users of Apache's license, like startups, don't necessarily follow suit. Ditto with other licenses following Apache's approach to patent scope, which is now quite common in "enterprise"-oriented license terms. Even my own, very strong copyleft Parity license (https://paritylicense.com https://paritylicense.com), which comes the closest to requiring "development in the open" of any terms I've seen, does not require unbroken development history or distribution of history data in any particular form, like a Git repository or an unbroken chain of patch files. My first thought is that requiring open work process would be difficult, especially without tying the requirement to specific tools or platforms---GitHub, Git---that will surely face obsolescence in time. But my second thought is that licenses have already adequately solved an analogous problem with success. A license could require that source code changes be made available not only in the preferred form for making further changes, but also in the preferred form for analysis of prior changes already made, for code copyright provenance verification, regression testing, incorporation into the "official version", development metrics calculation, or the like. I'm not sure I see a concrete use case requiring those kinds of terms. Nice to have, sure. But in what circumstance essential?