We provide an intrinsic definition of the fundamental group of a linear
category over a ring as the automorphism group of the fibre functor on Galois
coverings. If the universal covering exists, we prove that this group is
isomorphic to the Galois group of the universal covering. The grading deduced
from a Galois covering enables us to describe the canonical monomorphism from
its automorphism group to the first Hochschild-Mitchell cohomology vector
space.Comment: Final version, to appear in Algebras and Representation Theor
