diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
index 52f4931ee4..09eb9eef27 100644
--- a/.gitattributes
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 /* export-ignore
+/README-GITHUB.txt -export-ignore
diff --git a/README-GITHUB.txt b/README-GITHUB.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..c24aa98669
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README-GITHUB.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+Github release tarballs are not supported by Ardour
+===================================================
+
+This information applies to bundles automatically generated by
+https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/releases
+
+Ardour's program version is maintained using git-tags. Compiling Ardour depends
+on `git describe` (a full git clone is needed for this) or alternatively a
+version-file in the release-dist. Github cannot provide the latter and also
+does not allow to inject a version-file during export archiving.
+
+For further information see http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=7328