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Restrictions of GPL prevented people from creating commercial Git GUI programs (see GPL FAQ http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html). Did they create their own Git implementation from scratch?

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The GPL generally doesn't block a proprietary program from calling an open source one via a shell pipe. If it did, most commercial software running on a Linux system would run afoul of the GPL licensing of the core system commands (cp, ls, bash, etc.).

Furthermore, there are a number of more liberally-licensed binary-compatible reimplementations of Git available now (Grit and JGit spring to mind) that could be used as an alternate access layer, if you were less concerned with 100% compatibility with the latest Git features.

This is a difficult question (GPL is difficult!), that's why I referred to GPL FAQ. See this answer: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySys... or http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

Thanks for pointers to other implementations!

They most likely use jgit, since they require a JRE, and jgit is under the BSD.

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