In the case where you don't specify a target directory, `git clone` creates the empty directory dw-free and clones into it.  But try something like

    git clone https://github.com/dreamwidth/dw-free.git ~

when your home directory isn't empty, and git will throw its hands up.  (It doesn't care about .dotfiles, though.)

dw-free needs to get checked out to $LJHOME, which, aiui in the default setup, is the dw user's $HOME directory -- so it's quite likely to have something else in it. =)